NOV  231907 


BR  121  .D67  1907 
[Dougall,  Lily]  1858-1923. 
The  Christ  that  is  to  be 


THE    CHRIST   THAT    IS   TO    BE 


This  book  is  published  in  Great  Britain  under  the 

TITLE     "CHRISTUS    FuTURUS." 


THE    CHRIST  THAT  IS 
TO   BE 


BY    THE    AUTHOR    OF 

"PRO    CHRISTO    ET   ECCLESIA" 


The  year  is  dying  in  the  night ; 
Ring  out,  wild  bells,  and  let  him  die. 
****** 
Ring  out  old  shapes  of  foul  disease; 
Ring  out  the  narrowing  lust  of  gold  ; 
Ring  out  the  thousand  wars  of  old, 
Ring  in  the  thousand  years  of  peace. 

Ring  in  the  valiant  man  and  free, 
The  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand  ; 
Ring  out  the  darkness  of  the  land, 
Ring  in  the  Christ  that  is  to  be. 

—  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON  :    MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 

I907 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1907, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1907. 


Nortoooti  $re8S 

J.  S.  Cushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

This  book  is  only  a  series  of  successive  efforts 
to  think  what  the  gospel  of  Jesus  really  is.  Each 
line  of  thought  is  unfinished,  and  there  is  very 
much  in  what  is  said  that  in  a  mature  work 
would  be  more  carefully  guarded  from  miscon- 
struction. These  fragments  are  only  published  in 
the  hope  that  those  who  have  greater  opportunity 
may  find  in  them  something  to  refine  and 
complete. 


CONTENTS 

BOOK   I 
HIS   THOUGHTS   AND    OUR   THOUGHTS 

CHAPTER   I 

PAG 

Our  Need  of  Reformation     ..... 

Jesus  meant  his  salvation  to  become  universal.  If  the  race  pro- 
gresses, that  which  will  be  its  final  satisfaction  cannot  have  been 
fully  comprehended  at  the  beginning. 

An  era  of  higher  spiritual  and  physical  life  would  enable  us  to 
accept  the  standard  of  Jesus.  To  this  end  a  higher  level  of 
corporate  faith  is  needed. 

We  cannot  yet  see  our  way  to  accept  his  standard,  but  our  sin  lies 
in  our  determination  to  walk  by  sight. 


CHAPTER    II 


The  Vital  Age 


The  converts  of  the  first  age  of  the  Church  had  only  such  reports 

of  Jesus  as  a  fair   consensus  of  opinion  among  New   Testament 

critics  now  gives  us. 
We   may  find   in   it  more   vital    inspiration   than    in   the    doctrinal 

systems   which  in  intervening   centuries  have  perhaps  made    the 

personal  character  of  Jesus  more  difficult  of  access. 
If  these  systems  be  true  for  us,  we  shall,  in  finding  Jesus,  return  to 

them. 
Rediscovering  the  personal  Jesus  in  the  first  reports  of  his  ministry, 

we  may  aspire  to  fill  this  age  with  as  great  a  comparative  advance 

of  the  Church  as  the  first  century  exhibited. 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    III 


PAGE 


The  Actions  of  Jesus     ......        20 

If  "  for  this  world  the  word  of  God  is  Christ "  the  words  the  Christ 

spoke  can  only  be  part  of  his  message. 
By  obedience  to  his  words  we  shall  be  justified  or  condemned,  but 

it  was  by  his  works  that  he  asked  us  to  judge  of  him. 
By  his  actions,   whose   significance  does  not  depend  on  their  being 

miraculous,  Jesus  teaches  the  power  of  his  presence,  and  that  the 

will  of  God  is  directed  against  suffering  as  against  sin. 


CHAPTER   IV 
Faith  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .30 

Faith  is  a  true  estimate  of  those  qualities  of  personality  which  are 

hidden  from  sense. 
A  man's  faith  depends,  not  only  on  his  own  qualities,  but  also  on 

the  standard  of  corporate  faith. 
A  man  cannot  measure  his  own  faith  or  that  of  another. 
The  only  test  of  faith  is  its  result. 


CHAPTER    V 
Corporate  Faith  .......        44 

The  race  is  a  corporate  unity.  The  laws  of  corporate  thought  are 
universal,  and  must  govern  the  condition  of  the  Church. 

Church  and  world  are  alike  affected  by  mental  epidemics  and  popular 
reform  movements. 

Therefore  the  Church  can  only  be  pure  in  the  degree  that  she  puri- 
fies the  world,  be  at  peace  as  she  pacifies  the  world,  comprehend 
truth  as  she  teaches  the  world  to  comprehend  it. 

The  degree  of  isolation  proved  desirable  for  any  community  does 
not  counteract  the  invisible  influence  of  the  world's  thought 
upon  it. 

CHAPTER    VI 
The  Doctrine  of  Prayer        .....        56 

Jesus  sets  forth  his  doctrine  of  prayer  in  his  works. 

He  teaches  a  constant   procession   of  life    from  God  to  the  world. 

This    life   gives   physical   and    mental    health,    the    knowledge   of 

forgiveness,  and  the  desire  to  live  and  die  for  men. 


CONTENTS  ix 


PAGE 


God's  action  is  invariable  :  the  reception  of  his  gifts  depends  on 
man's  faith.  Man  need  never  be  uncertain  as  to  God's  will  j 
it  is  in  man's  will  that  uncertainty  is  found,  and  God  will  never 
coerce  the  wills  of  men. 


CHAPTER   VII 

The    Place    of    the    Kingdom    in    the    Struggle    to 

Survive  .......        70 

As  a  unit,  or  a  part  of  a  limited  corporate  unit,  man  survives  by 
fighting  and  getting. 

But  the  potentially  universal  unit,  called  by  Jesus  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  can  only  be  formed  by  men  who  cultivate  the  faculties 
of  loving  and  giving  to  the  atrophy  of  hate  and  greed. 

Until  this  unit  becomes  universal  the  individualism  and  party 
spirit  of  the  world  will  oppose  it.  Therefore  the  children  of 
the  kingdom  —  the  Church  —  will  suffer  persecution  5  but  it  is 
only  as  the  suffering  is  incidental  to  loving  and  giving,  and  is 
freed  from  all  spirit  of  retaliation,  that  it  goes  to  increase  the 
sway  of  the  kingdom. 

It  is  only  by  accepting  this  plan  that  the  human  race  can  survive  in 
a  higher  spiritual  environment. 


CHAPTER   VIII 
Salvation  by  Joy  .......        76 

Suffering  is  incidental  and  temporary  in  the  scheme  of  salvation  that 

Jesus  taught ;  joy  is  of  its  essence. 
The    Christian's   suffering  is  that  entailed  by  the  opposition  of  the 

world-spirit  to  love. 
The  Christian  is  never  commanded  to  undergo  suffering  for  the  sake 

of  personal  improvement. 


x  CONTENTS 

BOOK   II 

THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

The  Conflict  of  the  Physical  and  the   Moral        .        95 

With  the  growth  of  a  sense  of  sin  the  early  animal  delight  in  mere 
living  vanished.  We  see  in  history  that  men  who  strove  after 
righteousness  easily  embraced  physical  evil  as  a  means  to  that  end. 

But  Jesus  intended  his  salvation  to  end  the  opposition  between 
moral  and  physical  welfare. 

CHAPTER   II 

The  Use  of  Sin    .  .  .  .  .  .  .103 

Sin  is  a  schoolmaster  driving  men  to  God. 

Because  it  exists  we  are  bound  to  believe  that  it  has  its  place  in 
God's  purpose  for  man's  development.  But  if  we  believe  that 
it  is  God's  will  that  we  should  sin,  we  part  with  common  sense 
and  all  true  religion. 

CHAPTER   III 

The  Use  of  Pain 108 

Pain  is  a  schoolmaster  driving  men  to  God. 

But  if  we  hold  God  responsible  for  pain  in  any  other  sense  than 
that  in  which  he  is  responsible  for  sin,  we  part  company  with 
common  sense  and  the  doctrine  of  Jesus. 

If  we  believe  that  God  deals  punitive  discipline  to  men  we  shall 
do  the  same.  As  we  are  coming  to  see  that  the  infliction  of 
suffering  does  not  produce  reformation,  we  shall  be  compelled 
to  dissociate  it  from  the  thought  of  God's  will,  and  the  war 
against  all  suffering  will  become  as  sacred  as  the  war  against  sin. 

History  shows  that  only  those  nations  have  progressed  that  have 
distinguished  between  believing  that  God  permits  sin  and  believing 
that  he  wills  it. 

We  must  now  distinguish  between  the  belief  that  God  permits 
suffering  and  the  belief  that  it  is  God's  will. 


CONTENTS  xi 


CHAPTER   IV 

PAGE 

Fatalism  and  Asceticism  .  .  .  .  .119 

The  ascription  of  suffering  to  the  will  of  God  produces  a  fatalism 
inconsistent  with  the  true  genius  of  Christianity. 

It  also  produces  an  asceticism  founded  on  the  idea  that  the  endur- 
ance of  suffering  is  to  be  sought  as  a  means  of  mere  personal 
improvement  ;  whereas  the  only  justification  for  self-denial,  and 
the  ample  field  for  effort,  is  the  advance  of  the  kingdom. 

The  essential  difference  between  both  fatalism  and  asceticism  and 
the  doctrine  of  Jesus  discussed. 


CHAPTER    V 
Prophets  and  Apostles  ...... 

Prophets  and  apostles  were  men  of  their  age,  whose  inspiration  is 
seen  in  their  lives,  and  may  be  gauged  by  the  life  they  implanted 
in  others. 

If  Jesus  was  in  any  sense  divine,  his  interpretation  of  God  could 
not  have  been  conditioned  by  the  mind  of  his  age. 

The  divine  authority  and  infallibility  of  Jesus  is  an  intuitive  assur- 
ance of  the  Christian,  but  may  be  buttressed  by  reason. 

Thus  ( 1 )  the  unique  joy  which  was  the  early  effect  of  his  message 
to  the  world  goes  to  prove  that  he  is  himself  unique. 

(2)  So  does  the  fact  that  his  message  was  transmitted  by  men 
obviously  incapable  of  completely  understanding  it,  in  a  form 
which  meets  the  needs  of  successive  generations  and  enables  Jesus 
himself  to  be  increasingly  understood. 

Many  of  our  conclusions  are  based  on  the  assumption  that  the  life 
and  words  of  Jesus  have  only  an  inspiration  which  the  inter- 
pretations of  his  forerunners  and  followers  also  possess.  We 
need  to  revise  such  conclusions,  for  we  do  not  now  believe  that 
the  writers  of  the  Bible  either  possessed  the  insight  of  Jesus  or 
were  mechanically  inspired. 


CHAPTER   VI 
Irreverent  Eclecticism  ...... 

We  do  not  use  Scripture  reverently  if  we  base  opinions  on  texts 
contradicted  in  their  context. 

We  find  two  contradictory  theories  running  through  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  the  Epistles  concerning  God's  relation  to  physical  evil. 

The  only  consistent  doctrine  is  in  the  words  and  acts  of  Jesus. 


132 


47 


xii  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    VII 

PAGE 

Dreams  of  Justice  .  .  .  .  .  .152 

We  do  not  think  laws  just  which  condemn  the  innocent  to  suffer 
with  the  guilty.      But  in  life  as  we  know  it  this  must  always  be. 

Thus  our  notion  of  ideal  justice  never  appears  to  be  even  approxi- 
mately realised  in  the  world,  and,  further,  the  doctrine  of  Jesus 
would  seem  to  set  it  aside  as  negligible. 

We  must  attribute  justice  to  God,  for  without  it  there  could  not 
be  forgiveness,  but  we  have  no  conception  of  what  divine  justice 
may  be,  and  therefore  we  cannot  comprehend  divine  forgiveness 
from  the  divine  side. 


BOOK    III 
GOD'S    CITADEL    ON    EARTH 

CHAPTER   I 
The  Devil  and  his  Angels      .  .  .  .  .165 

Jesus  appears  to  express  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  separate  Evil 
Will,  subordinate  to  God,  immanent  in  man's  sin  and  suffering. 

The  common  argument  that  evil  cannot  be  an  active  force  because 
that  would  involve  an  unthinkable  dualism,  is  equally  an  argu- 
ment against  man's  free  will.  Therefore,  if  we  believe  in  free 
will,  it  is  not  impossible  to  believe  in  the  Evil  One. 

Whether  Jesus,  in  speaking  of  the  devil  and  demons,  was  using 
words  in  their  plain  meaning,  or  speaking  in  a  parable,  we 
cannot  determine  5  if  a  parable,  the  truth  set  forth  must  have 
been  more,  not  less,  terrible  than  the  figure  which  conveyed  it. 

CHAPTER   II 
The  Scorn  of  Superstition     .  .  .  .181 

We  think  in  this  age  we  can  finally  distinguish  truth  from  super- 
stition ;  but  ancient  thought  often  returns  disguised  as  a  newly 
discovered  truth. 


CONTENTS  xiii 


PAGE 

The  ancient  belief  about  disease-demons  has  suggestive  points  of 
analogy  with  what  we  now  know  of  intrusive  disease-germs. 
Although  this  does  not  afford  any  sufficient  basis  on  which  to 
build  the  belief  that  diseases  of  the  mind  may  be  caused  by  the 
intrusion  of  spiritual  evil,  it  suffices  to  teach  us  that  suspense 
of  judgment  is  the  wiser  attitude. 

All  things  have  their  physical  explanation,  but  that  is  not  necessarily 
an  exhaustive  explanation. 

CHAPTER   III 

The  permanent  Need  of  "Exorcism"     .  .  .197 

The  characteristic  of  "possession  "  is  loss  of  self-control. 

Mental  compulsions  with  this  characteristic  have  been  common  in 

all    times.       This    illustrated   by    mental    epidemics    and    chronic 

hysteria. 
We  are  faced  with  these  undefined  evils,  half  physical,  half  moral, 

before  which  the  Church  is  helpless.      Whatever  be  their  cause, 

the  commission  of  Jesus  clearly  includes  their  cure. 

CHAPTER   IV 

Mind  and  Disease  .  .  .  .  .  .215 

Progressive  medical  thought  tends  more  and  more  to  recognise  the 

use  of  mind  in  curing  the  body. 
It   is   now   maintained  that    functional   diseases  may  thus  be  cured, 

but  not  organic.       Further  consideration  leads  to  the  belief  that 

this  is  not  a  final  word  in  the  matter. 
The  unity  of  nature  points  to  the  universal  interaction  of  mind  and 

body. 

CHAPTER   V 
Faith  and  the  Doctors  .  .  .  .  .226 

The  quarrel  between  the  mind-healer  and  the  doctor  has  no  bearing 

on  the  bodily  salvation  Jesus  offers. 
Jesus  did  not  condemn  any  curative  agent,  and  no  good  doctor  can 

condemn  any  genuine  method  of  cure. 


CHAPTER    VI 

The  Will  of  God  .  .  .  .  .  .232 

Jesus  taught  that  health  was  God's  will,  that  it  was  an  inevitable 
consequence  of  the  right  faith. 


xiv  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

This  truth  has  been  neglected,  but  we  can  neglect  it  no  longer 
when  the  advance  of  knowledge,  by  many  voices,  is  telling  us 
that  body  and  mind  are  not  two,  but  one,  and  that  health  is 
essential  to  the  complete  saint. 


CHAPTER    VII 
History  of  Health  by  Faith  ....      245 

The  early  Church  healed  the  sick. 

Later  the  heathen  idea  that  sin  had  its  root  in  the  flesh,  which  had 
already  influenced  Judaism,  triumphed  over  the  doctrine  of  Jesus 
that  sin  was  spiritual.  Faith  in  the  salvation  of  the  body  was 
lost  j  the  physical  nature  was  neglected  ;  and  the  war  between 
science  and  religion  was  the  result. 

At  the  time  of  Jesus  the  corporate  mind  easily  received  the  doctrine 
of  health  by  faith. 

To-day  the  corporate  mind  has  to  recover  this  doctrine,  and  till  it 
does  so  the  individual,  save  in  exceptional  cases,  cannot  rise  to  it. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

The  Balance  of  Nature         .  .  .  .  .256 

When  the  growth  of  physical  and  spiritual  power  do  not  correspond, 
man  becomes  ill-balanced. 

A  Church  that  persists  in  wailing  that  disease  is  the  will  of  God  is 
no  worthy  successor  of  the  apostles. 

The  only  basis  for  the  corporate  faith  that  will  bring  us  health  is 
the  acknowledgment  that  God  wills  health  for  every  man  with- 
out exception,  just  as  he  wills  cleanliness  and  goodness. 


CHAPTER   IX 

The  Nature  Marvels    ......      263 

The     "nature    miracles'"    are    quite    inexplicable,    but    cannot    be 

dissociated  from  the  historic   Christ. 
They  point  to  a  development  of  the  earthly  kingdom  to  be  realised 

by  future  ages. 
Careful   consideration   suggests  that   they  will  be    found   not  to    be 

miraculous. 


CONTENTS  xv 


CHAPTER   X 

PAGE 

The  Conditions  of  Physical  Power  .  .  .274 

Examination  of  the  conditions  required  for  the  "miracles,"  especially 
the  ' '  nature  miracles, ' '  shows  they  are  closely  allied  to  the  direc- 
tions for  successful  prayer  given  by  Jesus. 

These  conditions  include  perfect  amity,  individual  and  corporate,  with 
all  mankind. 

We  cannot  fairly  draw  conclusions  from  experience  of  the  results 
of  prayer  offered  under  militant  conditions,  or  judge  the  doctrine 
of  Jesus  by  that  experience. 


BOOK    IV 
HIS   WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

CHAPTER  I 

Fasting  and  Temptation  .  .  .  .  .291 

There   is   record    of   two    world-wide   hopes  —  one,    of  a    Deliverer 

who    would    perfect    man's    earthly    conditions}     another,    of  a 

Saviour  who  would  deliver  man  from  earth. 
Whether  earth  was  to   be  glorified   or   spurned  was  a  question  that 

divided  religious  thinkers  when  Jesus  came. 
After    the    experience   of  his    desert   fast  he   never  wavered    in   his 

effort  to  improve  man's  physical  condition. 
He    gave    no    encouragement   to    the    ascetic    principle,     but    gives 

perfect  satisfaction  to  the  hope  of  the  ascetic. 

CHAPTER    II 

The  Protest  of  the   Parable  .  .  .  .301 

The  Jews  were  not  ignorant  of  the  beliefs  and  ideas  of  other  nations 
at  the  Christian  era.  Jesus  saw  that  the  attention  of  the  religious 
world  was  then  fixed  on  arguments  and  systems  of  worship. 


xvi  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

In  choosing  to  teach  men  only  by  parables  Jesus  said,    in  effect  — 

it  is  the  life,  not  the  form  that  is  essential. 
Yet  form,  precise  and  beautiful,   is   necessary  to   a   parable,   though 

no  one  particular  form  is  necessary. 

CHAPTER    III 

The  Fighting  Spirit      .  .  .  .  .  .312 

The  endeavour  to  abolish  war  must  begin  in  our  own  hearts.  We 
must  not  love  invective.  We  must  overcome  party  spirit. 
Energy  is  better  than  mere  inertness,  for  Jesus  requires  strength 
of  purpose.  His  purpose  will  utilise  all  a  man's  energies.  The 
result  will  be  greater  individuality,  for  the  law  of  love  gives  full 
play  to  all  our  powers. 

CHAPTER    IV 
The  Sword  and  the  Muckrake       .  .  .  .326 

Must  war  always  exist  ?  The  change  in  public  opinion  within  the 
last  thirty  years  suggests  hope  that  it  may  not. 

Must  greed  always  exist  ?  The  question  of  a  reform  of  business 
principles  is  beset  with  difficulties,  but  here  again  individual 
effort  to  live  the  business  life  on  the  plan  of  Jesus  must  precede 
any  corporate  reformation,  and  commercial  history  shows  that 
change  in  the  corporate  ideal  is  possible  for  business  men. 

CHAPTER    V 
The  Protestantism  of  Jesus    .  .  .  .  •      335 

Jesus  taught  that  sins  of  the  lower  nature  do  not  shut  men  out 
from  his  salvation  as  do  sins  of  the  higher  nature.  Of  these 
he  chiefly  condemned  the  spiritual  pride  of  men  who  held  their 
religious  knowledge  to  be  perfect  and  final. 

As  this  is  a  permanent  sin  of  the  religious  nature  there  must  also 
be  a  permanent  protest  of  the  reformer  against  existing  religious 
standards.      This,  in  an  ideal  form,  is  found  in  the  life  of  Jesus. 

The  abuses  of  Judaism  in  his  time  were  very  great,  but  Jesus  only 
protests  against  those  evils  already  detected  by  the  Jewish  con- 
science. He  only  treated  with  neglect  doctrines  and  practices 
which  his  positive  teaching  must  eventually  supersede. 

This  principle  illustrated  by  contrasting  Jesus  and  Luther. 

By  the  prophecies  of  his  unexpected  return  he  taught  that  the 
Church  must  be  ready  to  welcome  successive  reformations. 


CONTENTS 


xvi  1 


CHAPTER   VI 
The  Power  of  His  Death      ..... 

In  the  midst  of  his  gift  of  complete  joy  —  spiritual,  volitional,  and 
physical  salvation  —  comes  the  death  of  Jesus,  the  supreme  fact 
of  his  ministry. 

In  his  death  he  taught  us  an  earthly  thing  —  to  endure  all  things 
and  forgive  all  things  rather  than  break  the  law  of  love.  We 
have  as  yet  only  partly  believed  this,  and  can  consequently  only 
receive  glimpses  of  the  heavenly  things  his  death  can  teach. 

It  gave  new  reality  to  the  hope  of  immortality  ;  for  to  feel  the  life- 
giving  power  of  Jesus  is  to  know  that  death  could  be  for  him 
only  transition,  and  the  state  where  his  will  is  more  perfectly 
realised  must  be  the  state  in  which  our  life  will  be  perfected  if 
we  attain  to  it. 

The  visions  of  his  resurrection-life  show  that  character  and  purpose 
pass  unchanged  through  death.  How  shall  we  become  fitted  in 
this  life  to  survive  in  the  environment  of  his  fuller  presence  ? 

He  teaches  that  his  own  shall  ever  share  his  joy,  but  the  manner 
of  his  death  precludes  any  doctrine  of  easy  and  universal  bliss. 

Concerning  the  lost,  Jesus  teaches  that  God  suffers  with  all  who 
fail,  and  is  always  as  kind  to  the  evil  as  to  the  good. 

The  only  salvation  he  offers  us  is  the  offer  of  himself — his  own 
character.  How  many  of  us  can  perceive  its  beauty  ?  how  many 
approximate  to  it  ? 

We  do  not  yet  know  what  divine  justice  and  forgiveness  are,  hence 
we  cannot  know  what  atonement  for  sin  means.  Yet  we  know 
that  it  is  the  vision  of  the  dying  Christ,  conquering  sin  and 
death  by  love,  that  uplifts  the  sinner. 

Human  reason  fails  to  hear  what  God  says  to  us  in  the  Crucifixion. 
The  Church  strives  to  hear  and  to  interpret.  This  must  ever  be 
her  function ;  but  until  she  has  brought  the  world  to  be  at  one 
with  her  and  with  Jesus  she  will  not  perfectly  understand. 


PAGE 

349 


Appendix  A  . 

Appendix  B  . 

Appendix  C  . 

Appendix  D  . 


375 
376 
378 
381 


BOOK  I 
HIS  THOUGHTS  AND  OUR  THOUGHTS 


CHAPTER  I 

OUR   NEED    OF    REFORMATION 

It  is  now  admitted  by  New  Testament  scholars 
that  those  words  of  Jesus  which  appear  to  treat  of 
the  society  he  founded  as  partial  in  extent,  and 
suggest  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  would  include 
but  a  few  out  of  the  many,  refer  only  to  the  period 
of  the  kingdom's  growth.  From  the  general 
tenor  of  his  teaching  and  outlook  we  gather 
that  he  thought,  not  only  that  he  was  providing 
a  salvation  for  the  whole  world,  but  that  his  sal- 
vation must  ultimately  pervade  the  whole  world ; 
and  further,  that  the  principles  of  conduct  he  laid 
down,  the  character  he  exemplified,  and  the  faith 
he  revealed,  if  closely  wrought  into  the  lives  of 
his  followers  would  most  quickly  and  effectually 
accomplish,  not  only  their  own  enfranchisement, 
but  the  enfranchisement  of  the  race. 

Meantime,  the  reception  and  transmission  of  his 
message  of  deliverance  did  not  depend  upon  its  being 
perfectly  comprehended;  and  the  great  proof  we 
have  of  the  truth  of  the  earliest  traditions  concerning 
him  is  that  his  followers  passed  on  an  ideal  which 
they  only  imperfectly  understood.     There  can  be 

3 


4         HIS   THOUGHTS    AND    OURS    book  i 

little  doubt  that  his  figure  of  coming  in  the  clouds 
with  power  and  great  glory  meant  to  him  the  world- 
wide acceptance  of  his  ideals,  which  he  rightly 
judged  to  be  so  far  above  the  ideals  of  the  time 
that  ages  would  be  required  for  their  perfect  com- 
prehension by  human  thought.  This  is  reason- 
able; he  could  not  be  the  Christ  of  all  time  were 
it  possible  for  any  passing  generation  to  understand 
more  than  a  portion  of  his  ideal.  We  are  com- 
pelled, indeed,  to  choose  between  the  standard  of 
a  past  age,  which  must  decrease,  as  all  its  preachers 
must,  in  the  evolution  of  life  and  thought,  and  the 
God-like  standard  of  a  Christ  who,  because  he 
must  continually  increase,  must  in  every  progres- 
sive generation  be  imperfectly,  but  less  imperfectly, 
understood.  But  a  teacher  imperfectly  understood 
may  be  obeyed,  and  the  first  question  of  any  who 
would  understand  his  doctrine  must  be  concerning 
the  doing  of  his  will. 

Jesus  came  to  a  suffering  and  vicious  world, 
and  proclaimed  a  God  who  required  from  every 
man,  whatever  his  heredity,  whatever  his 
circumstance,  not  only  the  righteousness  then 
acknowledged,  but  a  far  more  vigorous,  more 
perfect  life;  a  goodness,  not  only  in  action  but  in 
imagination,  in  desire  and  motive,  in  every  chance 
thought;  an  earnest  purpose  of  love  multiplied  by 
every  possible  opportunity  of  doing  good. 

Such  a  God  asks  the  impossible.  Good  men 
on  all  sides,  then  and  ever  since,  have  arisen  to 
welcome  the  beautiful  ideal  and  explain  that  it  was 
meant  to  be  impossible,  —  a  star  for  moths  to  de- 
sire, a  morrow  which  humanity  would  never  see, 


ch.  i    OUR   NEED   OF   REFORMATION    5 

demanded  of  man  by  God  only  in  order  that  his 
creature  might  constantly  strain  himself  here  in 
attempting  what  he  could  not  perform,  to  the  end 
that  he  might  be  a  little  bigger  and  a  little  better 
hereafter.  And  for  nineteen  centuries  we  have 
been  learning  more  and  more  clearly  that  man, 
here  and  now,  is,  and  since  we  have  any  history  of 
him  always  has  been,  so  hampered  by  the  imperfec- 
tions of  body  and  brain,  the  taint  of  his  fathers' 
fathers,  the  accidents  of  his  infancy  and  the 
limitations  of  his  age,  as  to  be  quite  unable  to 
fulfil  the  law  of  Christ  in  any  rounded  and  adequate 
way.  Our  Christian  teachers  drew  a  kindly  line 
between  deadly  and  venial  sin,  until  the  psycho- 
logists and  physiologists  told  us  that  some  of  the 
so-called  deadly  sins  are  those  for  which  men  are 
least  responsible;  and  now  we  are  taught  to 
distinguish  between  infirmities  which  must  take  a 
lifetime  to  spend  their  force  and  thus  diminish, 
and  faults  which  can  be,  and  therefore  ought  to 
be,  swiftly  cured.  More  and  more  we  learn  that, 
so  far  from  the  doom  on  children's  children  being 
arbitrary,  it  is  inevitable,  so  inevitable  that  the 
man  of  science  and  the  moralist  are  at  variance 
concerning  the  cause  and  nature  and  cure  of  crime. 
But  Jesus  taught  that  the  demand  of  God  for 
righteousness  was  inexorable.  We  go  back  to  the 
historic  Christ,  and  we  find  that  he  who  was  more 
tender  over  human  frailty  than  any  other  showed 
no  recognition  of  disciples  who  refused  to  follow 
where  he  led.  Even  after  making  every  allowance 
for  the  figurative  nature  of  our  Lord's  sayings,  we 
all  admit  that  he  made  the  most  stringent  demands 


6         HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

for  earnestness  of  purpose,  an  earnestness  of  which 
the  average  man  is  physically  incapable;  for  a 
degree  of  self-devotion  which  most  men's  minds  are 
unable  to  admire,  much  less  acquire;  for  love  of 
which  most  men  cannot  conceive,  let  alone  feel. 
And  we  are  told  that  he  said,  "  Every  one  that 
heareth  these  sayings  of  mine  and  doeth  them 
not,  shall  be  likened  to  a  foolish  man  who  built  his 
house  upon  the  sand  .  .  .  and  it  fell,  and  great 
was  the  fall  of  it." 

Truly,  indeed,  great  is  the  fall !  When  we 
examine  the  boasted  civilisation  of  Christendom 
with  the  searchlight  of  the  precepts  of  Jesus  Christ, 
we  see  only  broken  walls  upon  the  sands  of  com- 
promise. If  our  faith  in  social  evolution  is 
strengthened  by  the  testimony  of  all  history  that 
to-day's  civilisation  is  on  the  whole  better  than 
anything  the  world  has  yet  seen,  we  must  still 
admit  that  it  is  not  Christian,  that  it  is  perhaps 
finding  its  most  startling  development  in  a  nation 
not  even  nominally  Christian.  We  cannot  for  one 
moment  suppose  that  our  institutions,  or  the  aver- 
age life  of  the  nominal  Christian,  are  so  planned 
that  our  house  can  be  said  to  be  built  upon  the 
rock  of  obedience  to  the  sayings  of  Christ. 

There  are  three  objections  urged  against  the  prac- 
tice of  Christ's  precepts,  — that  they  are  meant  only 
to  inculcate  an  inward  temper  of  heart ;  that  they  are 
meant  only  for  a  certain  class ;  and  that  they  are  for 
private,  not  public,  exercise.    Let  us  consider  these. 

Our  Lord's  ethical  teaching  presupposes  civil, 
domestic,  and  commercial  life.  We  have  the  city, 
the  court,  the  officer,  the  judge,  the  house,  the 


ch.  i    OUR  NEED  OF  REFORMATION     7 

private  room,  the  lamp,  the  loaf;  or  again,  the 
master,  the  servant,  the  bushel  basket,  the  field, 
the  crop,  the  market.  All  these  are  a  part  of  the 
life  to  which  his  injunctions  apply,  and  are  used 
as  the  pith  of  his  illustrations.  Those  many 
devotional  writers  who  would  remove  and  limit 
the  urgency  of  our  Lord's  teaching  to  the  separate 
life  of  the  soul  have  there  a  sufficient  refutation, 
for  in  that  inner  chamber  the  machinery  does  not 
exist  with  which  the  commands  are  to  be  worked 
out.  A  man  or  bodv  of  men  in  any  isolation, 
actual  or  ideal,  could  no  more  obey  the  great 
Sermon  in  St.  Matthew  than  a  celibate  could  dis- 
charge a  man's  duties  toward  wife  and  child. 
The  peacemaker  must  live  among  those  who  are 
at  variance.  The  meek  must  have  cause  of  affront. 
The  persecuted  must  face  some  organised  tyranny, 
armed  only  with  the  meekness  of  love.  The 
brother  to  whom  exhaustless  love  is  to  be  contin- 
ually offered  must  be  always  at  hand,  a  vain,  silly, 
and  irritating  person;  and  how  is  it  possible  to 
obey  the  Christian  rule  toward  such  an  one  if 
we  do  not  obey  it  in  the  market,  in  the  street, 
in  law  court,  and  in  religious  assembly  ?  To  sit 
in  any  hermitage  of  fact  or  fancy  and  exercise  a 
heavenly  temper  is  clearly  futile,  so  far  as  obedience 
to  Jesus  Christ  is  concerned;  and  as  futile  is  the 
more  modern  method  of  limiting  the  benevolent 
energies  by  zeal  in  chosen  channels,  buying  thus 
an  imaginary  license  to  be  good  fighters  and  good 
haters  when  our  theology  or  liberty  is  called  in 
question. 

Thus  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  live  the  religious 


8         HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

life  as  our  Lord  directs,  that  we  be  part  of  a 
populace.  What  virtue  is  there  in  humility, 
modesty,  and  private  devotion  if  the  push  and  press 
of  the  world's  opinions  are  not  upon  us  ?  Why 
should  we  make  a  good  toilet  when  we  perform 
our  self-denials  if  no  one  is  to  be  cheered  by  the 
innocent  imposture  ?  There  could  be  no  virtue 
in  having  no  anxiety  about  our  support  if  we  lived 
without  worldly  responsibility.  The  "narrow 
gate,"  the  "house  upon  the  rock"  are  clearly  to 
be  found  only  in  the  busy  haunts  of  men. 

If  it  is  wrong  to  regard  the  counsels  of  per- 
fection as  applying  only  to  a  temper  of  soul,  it 
is  equally  wrong  to  assume  that  they  apply  only 
to  some  apostolic  or  saintly  class.  If  there  be 
any  class  of  Christians  on  whom  these  injunctions 
were  not  laid,  we  should  have  to  discover  what 
rule  of  life  Jesus  laid  down  for  their  guidance. 
He  would  seem  to  have  left  them  totally  without 
instruction.  His  own  example  cannot  be  their 
rule,  for  he  carried  out  to  the  uttermost  his  own 
precepts.  If  there  are  those  to  whom  it  does 
not  belong  to  cast  their  material  cares  on  God's 
providence,  to  lend  and  give  to  all  who  ask, 
to  love  their  enemies,  then  neither  is  it  their 
part  to  let  their  light  shine,  to  bring  their  gift 
to  the  altar,  or  to  love  their  neighbours.  In  the 
whole  gospel  there  is  no  indication  that  Jesus 
offers  any  aid  or  reward  to  a  partial  obedience. 
No  man  looking  back,  yielding  only  part  of 
himself,  failing  to  take  up  the  whole  burden,  is 
fit  for  the  kingdom.  If  there  is  a  class  to  whom 
these  tests  do  not  apply,  there  is  no  parable,  or 


ch.  i     OUR  NEED   OF  REFORMATION     9 

any  teaching  or  action  of  his,  indicating  that  his 
companionship,  his  promise,  his  salvation,  are 
for  that  class. 

Nor  is  it  practical  to  suppose  that  the  highest 
teaching  is  intended  to  inculcate  conduct  which 
men  must  imitate  in  their  private  capacity,  but 
not  as  members  of  a  social  or  civic  system. 
Nothing  could  be  more  unpractical.  In  every- 
day life  a  man  is  as  he  does.  If  in  every  relation 
that  binds  him  to  the  political  and  social  order 
he  is  to  act  at  variance  with  the  code  of  Christ  he 
will  never  be  Christ-like.  Let  us  ask  how  a  man 
can  divide  his  private  from  his  public  life.  We 
are  told  that  the  commercial  man  or  wage-earner 
may  give  lavishly  in  private,  but  in  the  counting- 
house,  the  workshop,  and  the  field  he  must  not 
be  lavish,  or  he  will  be  endangering  his  own 
solvency  or  underselling  his  neighbours.  The 
ordinary  tradesman  and  working-man  must,  then, 
give  up  attempting  to  realise  the  Christian  temper, 
because  they  have  really  so  little  scope  for  its 
exercise;  Sundays  and  evenings  would  be  outdone 
by  the  sordid  six  days  of  the  week,  when  every- 
thing must  be  weighed  in  a  nice  balance  of  selfish 
thrift;  character  would  be  the  outcome  of  the 
working  hours.  Again,  we  are  told  that  a 
statesman  may  obey  the  law  of  love  in  private 
life,  but  not  in  national  or  international  relations. 
But  if  he  be  a  good  statesman  all  his  best  thought 
is  given  to  the  state,  and  in  the  process  his 
character  develops;  as  he  thinks  and  acts  so  he 
becomes.  So  it  is  also  with  the  ecclesiastical 
ruler  whose  churchcraft  is  governed  by  the  rules 


io       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

that  will  bring  the  Church  earthly  success.  In 
the  end  his  character  will  be  forged  in  the  heat 
of  his  work,  not  in  the  quiet  of  his  devotional 
hours. 

Perhaps  no  better  illustration  of  the  prevailing 
temper  of  our  Christianity  can  be  had  than  in  a 
quotation  from  the  words  of  one  who  is  one  of 
the  best  of  the  Christians  and  scholars  of  our 
generation. 

"Christianity  —  the  true  Christianity  —  carries 
no  arms;  it  wins  its  way  by  lowly  service,  by 
patience,  by  self-sacrifice.  History  shows  that 
there  are  no  instruments  of  religious  propaganda 
comparable  to  these.  It  also  shows  that  the  type 
of  character  connected  with  them  is  of  the  very 
highest  attractiveness  and  beauty.  Is  it  a 
complete  type,  a  type  to  which  we  can  apply  the 
Kantian  maxim,  'So  act  as  if  your  action  was  to 
be  a  law  for  all  human  beings'  ?  This  would 
seem  to  be  more  than  we  ought  to  say.  ...  If 
we  are  to  say  the  truth  we  must  admit  that  parts 
of  it  would  become  impracticable  if  they  were 
transferred  from  the  individual  standing  alone  to 
governments  or  individuals  representing  society"  1 
(The  italics  are  ours.) 

If  this  is  the  highest  degree  of  belief  in  the 
common  sense  of  Jesus  which  seems  possible  in 
the  cathedral  close,  in  the  most  religious  of  our 
great  universities,  can  we  wonder  if  we  find  that 

1  Art.  "Jesus  Christ,"  by  Dr.  Sanday,  Hastings's  Dictionary  of 
the  Bible,  p.  621.  In  the  same  Art.,  p.  652,  the  writer  disclaims 
sufficiency  for  these  remarks,  and  says  they  only  represent  such 
insight  as  we  at  present  have. 


ch.  i    OUR  NEED  OF  REFORMATION    n 

almost  every  Christian  individual  outside  that  pale 
acts  habitually  as  "representing  society,"  and  not 
as  "the  individual  standing  alone"  at  the  judg- 
ment-seat of  Christ  ?  Yet  this  pronouncement  of 
one  of  the  most  revered  of  Christian  thinkers  dif- 
fers from  the  teaching  of  other  Christian  preachers 
more  in  its  Christ-like  candour,  its  reverence  for 
fact,  than  in  anything  else. 

Let  each  of  us  ask  ourselves  if  we  do  not  agree 
with  it.  With  our  corporate  faith  in  God  such 
as  it  is  —  a  low  average  estimate  of  his  power, 
a  melancholy  estimate  of  his  will;  with  our 
corporate  thought  regarding  God  as  the  source 
of  all  our  diseases  and  disasters,  requiring  that 
we  shall  look  to  science,  not  to  religion,  for  their 
cure;  with  our  minds  tainted  with  sin,  appetite 
and  affection  deranged,  is  it  not  an  impossibility 
to  live  up  to  the  standards  of  Jesus,  to  endure 
persecution  with  joy  and  meekness,  to  overcome 
hate  with  love,  not  only  in  the  centre  of  the 
individual  heart  but  also  in  the  household,  in 
the  state,  and  in  the  world  ? 

Here,  then,  we  have  contradictory  ideals,  —  that 
of  Jesus,  who  maintains  that  his  is  the  common- 
sense  method  of  saving  the  world,  and  that  of 
Christendom,  which  maintains  that  his  laws  are 
impracticable. 

What  then  ?  Shall  our  civilisation  crumble  at 
the  word  of  Christ  ?  or  shall  Christ  be  rejected  ? 
That  his  way  of  life  would  mean  the  breaking 
down  of  commerce,  the  dismemberment  of  empires, 
the  crumbling  of  law  and  order,  is  perhaps  the 
reasonable  forecast  concerning  an  untried  method; 


12       HIS   THOUGHTS    AND   OURS    book  i 

but  its  truth  has  yet  to  be  proved.  We  have 
no  experience  that  goes  to  suggest  it.  No  con- 
siderable body  of  men  have  for  any  considerable 
length  of  time  attempted  in  the  power  of  faith 
to  heal  the  sick,  to  restore  self-control  to  the 
hysteric,  to  turn  the  other  cheek,  to  forgive  the 
criminal,  to  give  the  cloke  after  the  coat,  to 
agree  with  an  adversary  at  all  cost  in  order  to 
avoid  the  tribunal  of  war.  No  large  number  of 
Christian  preachers  have  ever  urged  that  social 
and  national  life  should  be  conducted  in  the  spirit 
of  these  injunctions.  We  face  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  as  we  stand  at  the  end  of  the  second 
Christian  millennium,  an  untried  path  leading 
to  an  unknown  region  of  human  life.  Now, 
when  the  heart  of  Africa,  the  temples  of  Thibet, 
the  frozen  seas,  are  yielding  their  last  secrets 
to  us,  and  we  are  liable  to  feel  that  the  world 
has  no  more  mysteries  except  in  those  ultimate 
assumptions  of  knowledge  on  which  the  struc- 
tures of  science  rest,  we  have  not  even  grasped 
the  idea  that  the  world's  greatest  genius,  in 
coming  to  save  the  world,  pointed  to  a  plan  for 
human  life  on  this  earth  which,  if  Christianity 
be  of  God,  must  mould  the  enterprise  of  the 
future,  and  prove  the  path  of  discoveries  more 
exhilarating  and  of  greater  worth  than  any  yet 
unfolded  to  our  eager  eyes.  Ever  and  anon  in 
the  Christian  centuries  we  witness  a  glimpse  of 
his  ideal,  illuminating  the  minds  of  certain  men 
and  women,  produce  some  great  movement  for- 
ward, but  it  has  always  been  quickly  reabsorbed 
by  the  common  lower  ideal  when  the  saint  whose 


ch.  i    OUR  NEED  OF  REFORMATION    13 

inspiration  lifted  men  for  the  hour  had  passed 
away.  Yet  the  plan  of  Jesus  still  lies  before 
the  world,  clearly  expressed  in  human  language, 
clearly  exemplified  in  his  own  ministry,  and,  as 
he  believed,  made  practical  by  the  marvels  of 
corporate  faith  which  he  inaugurated  as  God's 
will  for  man  and  the  proper  outfit  of  human 
capacity. 

Even  if  the  precepts  of  Jesus  only  mark  out 
the  path  to  the  whole  truth  he  came  to  impart,  we 
must  at  the  same  time  remember  that  they  mark 
out  the  only  path  to  that  truth.     It  is  also  certain 
that  we  have  not  accepted  that  path.     It  is  not  a 
plain  path;    and  when  we  hesitate  to  start  under 
clouds  that  bar  our  vision  of  the  end,  our  difficulty 
is  real.     The  ablest  theorists  do  not  help  us;    and 
our  sin  as  Christians  has  lain  in  our  conviction 
that  what  is,  reasonably  speaking,  impossible  to 
man   is   also   impossible  to   God.     Yet  we   know 
that  the  deepest  problems  of  life  must  be  worked 
out  in  action  —  not  only  individual  but  corporate 
action;   philosophy  or  theology  is  but  a  reasonable 
account  "after  the  event."     We  also  know  that 
the  greatest  contributions  to  the  working  principles 
of  the   race    before   they   justified   themselves   in 
practice  were  only  stumbling-blocks  to  the  theo- 
logian and  foolishness  to  the  philosopher.     Such 
was   monotheism  when   all   the  world  was   poly- 
theistic;   such  was  monogamy  when  all  the  world 
practised  polygamy;    such  was  the  education  of 
the   serf;     such   was    the   freedom   of  the   slave; 
such,  above  all,  was  trust  in  the  Cross.     And  to- 
day, when  we  cannot  see  how  the  highest  degree 


i4       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

of  self-realisation,  personal  or  national,  can  be 
reached  by  corporate  obedience  to  the  methods  of 
Jesus,  our  sin  does  not  lie  in  our  inability  to  see 
the  path,  but  in  our  determination  to  say  we  see, 
and  to  walk  by  sight. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    VITAL   AGE 

We  know  how  joyful,  how  rapid,  was  the  spread 
of  the  influence  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  first  hundred 
years  after  his  death.  In  the  teeth  of  cruel  per- 
secution, in  spite  of  slow  travel  and  slow  transcrip- 
tion, what  Jesus  called  "the  good  news"  lifted 
the  crippled  civilisation  of  the  Latin  world,  and 
sent  it  forward  leaping  and  walking  and  praising 
God.  There  have  been  many  explanations  of  that 
first  sudden  growth  and  expansion  of  Christianity 
and  of  its  subsequent  checks  and  periods  of  stagna- 
tion. All  these  explanations  have  probably  some 
truth.  It  only  concerns  us  here  to  observe  that, 
as  regards  the  authority  on  which  our  faith  rests, 
we  have  much  in  common  with  the  Christians  of 
that  most  vital  period.  Because  the  problems  of 
scholars  have  to-day  escaped  from  the  schools  and 
gone  abroad,  the  authority  of  our  sacred  writings 
has  become  very  much  what  that  of  the  oral  and 
written  report  was  in  that  most  ardent  time.  We, 
like  the  early  heathen  inquirers,  find  a  tradition  of 
the  sayings  and  actions  of  "the  Lord"  which  we 
would  fain  believe  to  be  historical.     If  historical, 


1 6       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

we  know  that  its  accuracy  may  be  impugned,  and 
we  must  be  as  careful  to  compare  one  account 
with  another  as  to  probe  each  as  far  as  may  be  to 
the  source.  No  other  religious  writings  have 
equal  significance  for  us.  We  must  pierce  through 
everything  to  the  character  and  power  of  the 
actual  "Lord"  they  present.  Because  it  is  by 
that  character  and  power  that  we  must  test  the 
truth  of  the  record,  we  are  not  to  be  stopped  in 
our  longing  look  by  the  supposed  sacredness  of 
any  letter  or  by  the  interpretation  of  any  school  — 
the  one  may  be  inaccurate,  the  other  effete.  Above 
all,  we  will  not  be  impeded  by  any  doctrines  about 
God  which  Jesus  himself  does  not  teach,  for,  like 
the  early  heathen  converts,  we  know  not  apart 
from  him  what  God  to  believe  in.  Now,  as  at 
first,  if  we  would  seek  any  help  stronger  than  self- 
help,  if  we  feel  any  need  for  salvation,  material  or 
spiritual,  we  must,  for  dear  life's  sake,  seek  to  find 
in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ  a  living  and  reliable 
power,  who  can  do  for  us  something  which  we 
cannot  do  for  ourselves. 

We  turn  to  the  Gospels  and  find  that  their 
main  theme  is  a  "kingdom,"  both  present  and 
eternal,  to  which  Jesus  calls  all  men,  of  which  he 
is  the  king.  This  implies  that  he  still  lives  in  an 
invisible  world  of  spirit,  very  near,  still  calls  to  us 
to  enter  and  enjoy  the  kingdom,  to  proclaim  its 
power  and  suffer  for  its  sake.  It  is  not  enough 
for  us  now  that  the  Church  or  the  Book  repeats 
the  call.  The  edifice  of  the  visible  Church,  ages 
old,  marvellous  and  majestic,  seemed  to  cant  over 
some    while    ago,    some    part    of   the    foundation 


chap,  ii  THE   VITAL   AGE  17 

sinking  below  the  ground,  the  door  hanging  loose. 
A  better  rock  bottom  may  be  touched;  towers 
and  walls  may  be  righted,  the  door  set  firm,  we 
hope,  but  in  the  meantime  may  not  be  sure. 
Many  have  trooped  in  without  right  of  entrance, 
and  have  lived  under  the  protection  of  the  veil 
that  hangs  before  the  inner  presence-chamber 
exquisitely  wrought  of  holy  scripture.  But  now 
this  veil  has  been  rent  in  the  midst  by  learning 
which  we  cannot  impugn.  The  glory  of  the 
workmanship  may  be  enhanced  by  the  rending  of 
the  poorer  part,  but  we  cannot  now  join  the  pieces 
perfectly.  We  who  would  not  trifle  with  life 
have  no  choice  but  to  run  breathless  into  the 
Holy  Place,  each  asking,  "Who  art  thou,  Lord  ?" 
and  "What  wouldst  thou  have  me  to  do?" 
The  two  questions  are  one,  for  personality  is 
revealed  in  the  demand  it  makes  upon  other 
persons. 

This  condition  of  things  is  full  of  hope.  If, 
in  the  unsettlement  of  the  hour,  we  are  no  worse 
off  than  the  early  Christians,  we  may  hope  to  be 
what  they  were.  If  Jesus  Christ  was  not  his 
own  revelation,  then  the  sacred  canon  of  the 
Book  or  Holy  Church  could  never  have  come 
rightly  into  being,  built  up  as  they  were  by  men 
who  had  no  guide  but  his  Spirit.  If  Jesus  Christ 
is  his  own  revelation,  now,  as  in  the  first  Christian 
ages  before  the  first  canon  of  Scripture  was  formed 
or  the  voice  of  the  Church  unified,  each  man  may 
weigh  all  reports  concerning  him,  find  that  personal 
revelation  for  himself,  and  follow  only  in  obedience 
to  the  heavenly  vision.  Now  we  may  see  faith 
c 


18       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

in  the  Christ  again  glow  and  spread  like  living, 
leaping  flame.  Church  and  Scripture,  in  so  far  as 
they  represent  him,  will  be  reinstated. 

There  is,  indeed,  already  much  evidence  of  this 
purging  and  rapid  fire  of  the  living  Christ  in  the 
field  of  foreign  missions.  To  one  class  of  Christian 
missionaries  we  would  here  draw  particular  atten- 
tion, because  they  are  in  the  condition  of  the 
primitive  Christians.  They  have  existed  in  all 
ages,  but  they  are  now  very  numerous,  and  give 
abundant  testimony.  We  refer  to  certain  native 
Christian  teachers  in  heathen  countries,  who  go 
forward  with  the  practice  of  the  presence  of  Jesus 
Christ  as  their  only  learning,  their  only  means  of 
support,  and  their  only  reward.1  These  men  brave 
the  worst  persecution,  they  teach  their  converts  to 
brave  it,  thinking  it  well  worth  while  for  the 
benefit  that  is  theirs.  Some  heal  the  sick,  cast 
out  devils,  and  buy  their  daily  bread  with  coins 
minted  in  the  bank  of  faith.  If  they  are  deluded 
it  is  our  duty  to  go  and  raise  them  above  their 
superstitions;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  they  have 
found  a  saner  and  more  abundant  life  than  we 
experience,  they  have  discovered  its  vital  germs  in 
the  small,  uncommentaried  translations  of  the 
Gospels  which  they  carry,  on  which  they  feed,  a 
source  to  which  we  have  access,  which  may  produce 
as  much  for  us  if  we  come  with  a  like  simplicity. 

1  See  The  Holy  Spirit  in  Missions,  by  Dr.  A.  J.  Gordon, 
chap.  iv. ;  Story  of  the  L.M.S.,  by  C.  S.  Home,  especially  end 
of  chap.  viii. ;  the  biography  of  Pastor  Hsi,  of  the  China  Inland 
Mission;  also  missionary  reports  of  the  "Christian  Alliance  for 
Divine  Healing  and  Foreign  Missions,"  New  York. 


chap,  ii  THE   VITAL   AGE 


i9 


Is  simplicity  here  a  cant  phrase  ?  We  should 
do  well  to  be  rid  of  all  such ;  but  it  is  worth  while 
to  observe  that  the  attitude  of  mind  to  which  alone 
the  truth  of  any  department  of  life  yields  itself  is 
exactly  the  same  in  the  disciplined  intellect  of  the 
greatest  scholar  and  in  the  honest,  earnest  child  or 
ignorant  learner.  It  is  at  once  the  earliest  gift  of 
nature  to  the  normal  mind  in  its  unfolding  and 
the  highest  result  of  the  mental  discipline  of  the 
schools.  We  discount  the  evidence  and  theories 
of  a  scientist  or  critic  when  we  say,  "He  has  a 
theory  to  prove,"  "He  can't  get  rid  of  a  pre- 
supposition," "He  sees  what  he  wants  to  see." 
Such  comments  are  a  slur  on  scholarship  in  any 
department  of  learning,  and  by  them  we  mean  to 
suggest  just  what  is  meant  by  the  words,  "Except 
ye  become  as  little  children  ye  shall  not  enter." 
It  is  not  ignorance,  or  the  subordination  of  the 
reason,  that  is  required  for  faith.  It  is  the  highest 
exercise  of  reason  to  seek  truth  with  that  reverence 
which  makes  no  forecast  of  the  finding.  It  is  the 
result  of  the  widest  knowledge  to  believe  that 
unknown  truth  is,  and  is  the  rewarder  of  them 
that  seek  it.     This  is  the  temper  of  all  true  faith. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    ACTIONS    OF   JESUS 

To  know  what  that  understanding  of  God  was 
that  Jesus  called  "the  faith  that  removes  moun- 
tains," and  to  be  able  to  exercise  it,  would  be  to  re- 
cover the  early  joy  of  the  gospel.  No  one  can  read 
the  Gospels  and  the  Acts  with  candid,  unbiassed 
mind  and  not  perceive  the  exuberance  of  delight,  in 
spite  of  "much  tribulation,"  which  the  doctrine, 
called,  par  excellence,  "the  good  news,"  produced  in 
those  who  received  it.  Our  great  trouble  is  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  read  whatis  hackneyed  without 
reading  into  it  whatever  hackneyed  gloss  we  chance 
to  be  accustomed  to.  The  individual  may  or  may 
not  have  the  right  of  using  his  private  judgment 
in  reading  the  Gospels,  but  it  is  certain  that  only 
one  man  in  a  multitude  has  the  power  to  use  it. 
The  particular  joy  of  those  Gospels,  and  the  faith 
that  produced  it,  have  been  almost  blotted  out  by 
the  effort  to  read  into  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus  the 
most  depressing  convictions  of  the  later  Judaic 
prophets  and  of  the  writers  of  the  Epistles  who  still 
joyfully  followed  their  Master,  and,  with  arbitrary 
eclecticism,   to   relegate  their  promises  of  joy  to 

20 


chap,  in    THE   ACTIONS    OF    JESUS  21 

a  future  state.  The  wailing  psalms  of  Israel  in 
subjection  to  foreign  powers,  and  the  litanies  of 
the  Christian  Church  in  the  Dark  Ages,  sing  in 
our  ears  whenever  we  listen  to  the  good  news  of 
Jesus.  We  look  at  his  whole  life  as  through  church 
windows  stained  with  carnal  crucifixions,  and  are 
almost  unconscious  that  the  glass  colours  all  that 
we  see. 

All  that  Jesus  said  and  did  is  an  expression  of 
his   insight  into   the   character  of  God   and   into 
God's   attitude  to  men;    and  what  he  did  must 
have  deeper  significance  than  what  he  merely  said. 
Language  is  only  coin  minted  in  the  heart  of  a 
race;    it  can  only  express   ideas   that  men  have 
already   consciously   thought   in   developing   their 
laws,  their  civilisations,  the  dicta  of  their  schools. 
If  Jesus  Christ  was  indeed  a  revelation  of  God, 
his  ministry,  not  his  words,  must  be  the  chief  part 
of  that  revelation.     As  well  say  that  God  could 
instruct  the  hosts  of  living  creatures  how  to  live 
by  the   handbooks   of  the   sciences,   or  form   the 
instincts  of  friendship  in  man  by  the  laws  of  hu- 
man governments,  or  reward  spiritual  attainments 
by  the  coin  of  earthly  treasuries,  as  say  that  the 
words  Jesus   used  contain  the  whole  gospel.     If 
"for  this  world  the  word  of  God  is  Christ,',  the 
words  Christ  used  could  be  but  part  of  his  message. 
Although    by   obedience   to    his    plain   words   we 
must  be  judged,  it  is  by  his  actions  that  he  asked 
to  be  justified  or  condemned.     Instead  of  fixing 
our  attention  first  on  those  actions  which  the  con- 
sensus of  the  records  certainly  attribute  to  him, 
the  Church  is  wont  to  turn  our  attention  from 


22        HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

them  to  give  final  teaching  on  certain  aspects  of 
his  pre-natal  life  and  his  resurrection  to  which  it 
is  less  certain  that  he  gave  the  seal  of  his  own 
authority.  The  message  of  angels,  the  virgin 
birth,  the  sacrificial  suffering,  the  ascent  into  a 
cloud  in  the  sky  —  to  deny  the  possibility  of  these 
is  to  assume  that  we  have  conned  the  possibilities 
of  the  universe,  but  who  can  say  that  Jesus  asked 
to  be  judged  by  these  ?  Yet  it  is  from  these  alone 
that  we  often  try  to  make  out  the  lineaments  of 
the  Eternal  Father.  Even  if  we  come  back  to 
hold  these  as  undoubted  facts  relating  to  his 
departure  from  the  Eternal  and  Invisible  and  his 
return  thither,  he  certainly  did  not  set  thern  forth 
as  our  first  and  chief  lesson.  If  in  his  ways  of 
restoring  men  mind  and  body  he  has  told  us  earthly 
things  and  we  believe  not,  how  can  we  expect  to 
understand  the  more  mysterious  matters  of  the 
hidden  heaven  which  may  have  been  seen  in  the 
trailing  glory  of  his  advent  and  return  ? 

The  truth  that  the  early  Church  held  to  be  most 
important,  the  truth  that  in  fact  is  most  important 
to  every  Christian  who  sets  forth  to  battle  in  the 
name  of  Jesus  with  the  awful  reality  of  sin  and 
pain,  is  the  personal  presence  of  Jesus.  St.  Paul, 
giving  a  plain  account  of  his  own  first  trial,  says, 
"The  Lord  stood  with  me."  It  is  this  very 
common  experience  which  is  the  stronghold  of  the 
Christian  faith.  It  was  certainly  by  his  works  of 
might  and  love  that  Jesus  impressed  the  power  of 
his  person,  the  sense  of  his  presence,  upon  the 
Church,  for  he  says  very  little  about  its  importance ; 
even  in  the  Johannine  discourses  it  is  more  often 


chap,  in    THE   ACTIONS    OF    JESUS  23 

the  indwelling  of  the  Spirit  that  is  emphasised. 
From  his  words  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  it  would 
be  difficult  to  prove  that  his  continued  grace  to 
the  Church  was  to  be  more  than  the  impress  of  his 
name,  i.e.,  his  character.  But  the  preponderance 
of  action  over  speech  in  that  record  makes  his 
personal  power  the  one  great  reality  of  his 
ministry;  and  the  ways  in  which  he  evinced  it 
make  it  the  one  great  necessity  to  the  children  of 
his  kingdom.  The  last  words  of  St.  Matthew's 
Gospel  had  become,  long  before  they  were  written, 
the  first  law,  as  it  were,  of  Christian  thought. 

Among  the  sayings  of  our  Lord  which  appear 
to  have  been  committed  to  writing  at  a  very  early 
date  there  are  two  which  must  form  a  most  im- 
portant clue  to  the  understanding  of  his  character 
and  ministry,  because  they  give  an  estimate  of  it 
in  his  own  words.  One  is  the  passage  in  which 
Jesus,  with  overcharged  heart,  upbraids  the 
favoured  cities  of  Galilee;  *  the  other  is  his  own 
epitome  of  his  ministry  sent  in  answer  to  the 
Baptist's  doubt.2 

It  was  a  moment  of  deep  emotion  that  pro- 
duced the  reproachful  apostrophe  to  Bethsaida 
and  Capernaum.  In  such  a  mood  the  deepest 
convictions  of  the  heart  are  shown.  Jesus  tells 
us  that  his  aim  is  to  bring  men  to  repentance, 
and  that  his  method  is  the  performance  of  those 
works  of  mercy  whose  character  we  know  from 
the  adjoining  records.  He  does  not  say,  "If  the 
word   that  has   been   preached   to  you  had   been 

1  St.  Matt.  xi.  21-24,  and  St.  Luke  x.  13-15. 

2  St.  Matt.  xi.  2-6,  and  St.  Luke  vii.  19-23. 


24       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

preached  in  Tyre  and  Sidon,"  etc.,  but  here 
distinctly  claims  to  be  judged  by  his  works. 
Here  it  is  evident  that  he  feels  that  his  merciful 
works  speak  louder  than  his  words,  and  that  the 
ultimate  sin  was  the  hardness  of  heart  which 
rejected  the  proofs  of  such  bountiful  compassion 
and  power.  From  this  passage  it  would  appear 
that  when  he  said  to  John's  disciples,  "The  blind 
see,  the  lame  walk,"  etc.,  he  referred  to  physical, 
not,  as  the  modern  mind  is  apt  to  suppose,  to 
spiritual,  works  of  healing.  For  it  is  obvious  that, 
if  the  cures  he  is  able  to  point  out  to  the  disciples 
of  the  Baptist  had  been  spiritual  reformations,  he 
could  never,  either  before  or  after,  have  condemned 
the  same  neighbourhood  for  lack  of  faith ;  he 
could  not  have  asserted,  "The  spiritually  blind 
see,  the  spiritually  lame  walk,"  and  at  another 
time  have  complained  that  this  was  not  the  case, 
nor  would  he  have  expected  a  careless  majority  to 
be  roused  and  convinced  by  the  inward  grace  he 
had  implanted  in  the  hearts  of  a  few. 

This  answer  to  the  Baptist  is  thus  of  the  utmost 
significance  as  containing  Jesus'  own  estimate 
of  his  mission.  It  is  distinctly  said  that  the 
cause  of  the  Baptist's  doubt  and  inquiry  was  the 
report  of  the  works  that  Jesus  did.  We  may 
assume  that  their  physical  nature  was  his  difficulty, 
for  John's  mind  was  fixed  upon  a  purely  ethical 
result.  The  tradition  concerning  him  shows  that 
John  had  rejected  the  common  belief  in  a  merely 
material  salvation.  National  salvation  consisted 
for  him  in  national  and  individual  goodness  of  a 
high  order.     John  apparently  supposed  that  such 


chap,  in    THE   ACTIONS    OF    JESUS  25 

goodness  was  in  the  immediate  power  of  the  people 
if  they  only  would.  He  thought  that  all  men 
who  were  worth  anything  would  prove  themselves 
by  self-government  to  be  good  fruit-trees  in  God's 
garden  and  pure  grain  on  God's  threshing-floor; 
if  not,  they  must  be  hewn  down  and  burned.  This 
is  the  story  concerning  John,  and  it  is  true  to  the 
type.  The  moralist  is  usually  a  man  of  well- 
developed  and  well-balanced  mental  power.  He 
does  not  cry,  as  even  St.  Paul  did,  "O,  wretched 
that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver  me  from  the  body 
of  this  death";  and  although  the  moralist  of  that 
time  was  certainly  inclined  to  believe  the  body  to 
be  the  seat  of  sin,  and  was  therefore  more  or  less 
ascetic,  he  felt  himself  strong  enough  to  control  such 
unruly  desires  as  warred  against  his  righteous  will. 
The  true  moralist  also  has  humility  in  the  presence 
of  what  appears  to  him  a  greater  purity  than  his 
own.  Such  men  usually  recognise  that  harshness 
is  their  besetting  sin,  although  they  do  not  see 
how  to  avoid  it  without  lowering  the  standard.  It 
is  probable  that  John  perceived  that  the  lamb-like 
gentleness  of  Jesus  was  a  divine  quality  as  long  as 
he  could  see  that  it  was  strictly  subservient  to  the 
severest  ethical  standards.  But  a  reformer  like 
John,  if  he  thinks  earnestly  at  all  about  the 
material  welfare  of  the  people,  regards  it  as  a 
consequence  of  righteous  living,  something  that 
would  come  after  reformation  if  at  all.  The  fact 
that  it  was  the  report  of  Jesus'  healing  works  that 
caused  John  to  inquire  whether  he  really  was  the 
Christ,  suggests  that  this  whole  business  of  spending 
time  and  strength  in  easing  all  who  asked  of  their 


26       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

disabilities  and  pains  appeared  to  John  to  be  moral 
trifling.  To  remove  afflictions  which  he  held  to 
be  God's  discipline,1  and  that  without  putting  the 
recipients  of  relief  to  any  probation  of  righteous- 
ness, could  hardly  have  appeared  to  a  mind  like 
his  to  be  true  kindness,  certainly  not  the  most 
direct  way  of  evoking  repentance  and  its  fruits. 

If,  then,  Jesus  could  have  given  an  answer 
suited  to  John's  desire  and  mental  temperament, 
he  surely  would  have  done  so.  Which  of  us 
would  not  pity  a  great  reformer  whose  light  was 
darkened  by  dungeon  walls  and  daily  danger  of 
a  cruel  death,  and  whose  lion-like  spirit  yet 
reached  out  to  desire  the  salvation  of  his  nation 
more  than  his  own  welfare  ?  If  this  situation 
could  touch  our  hearts,  how  much  more  the 
tender  heart  of  his  contemporary,  Jesus  !  What 
is  the  epitome  of  his  ministry  which  Jesus  gives  to 
this  moralist  ?  Does  he  minimise  his  work  for 
men's  bodies  by  showing  that  his  cures  were 
the  incidental  overflow  of  compassion  in  cases 
of  extreme  misery  ?  Does  he  say  that  to  teach 
righteousness  is  his  main  work,  and  the  other 
subsidiary  ?  No.  He  bids  the  messengers  see 
for  themselves  that  the  first  result  of  his  work 
is  that  sick  men  have  restored  to  them  the  use 
of  their  bodily  powers,  and  that  the  unfortunate 
are  comforted  by  good  news  of  God.  Jesus  does 
not  even  mention  in  his  reply  the  casting  out  of 
demons;    which  was,  of  all  his  benevolent  acts, 

1  One  of  the  most  characteristic  notes  of  the  more  spiritual 
literature  of  later  Judaism  was  the  interpretation  of  suffering  as 
a  sign,  not  of  God's  hostility,  but  of  his  educative  care. 


chap,  in    THE   ACTIONS    OF    JESUS  27 

the  one  which  would  most  have  appealed  to  John 
as  having  a  possible  ethical  significance. 

Since  Jesus,  in  these  two  passages,  claims  to 
have  his  ministry  and  character  judged  by  his 
wonderful  works,  it  is  of  first  importance  that  we 
should  discover  what  he  considered  their  essential 
characteristic.  It  has  often  been  assumed  that 
this  was  their  miraculous  nature;  but  let  us 
inquire.  In  another  case1  Jesus  is  asked  by 
religious  men  to  perform  a  work  of  which  the 
essential  feature  shall  be  that  it  is  miraculous  and 
beyond  the  power  of  common  men.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  it  was  frivolity  in  those  who  asked 
that  made  Jesus  refuse  their  request.  While  it 
is  true  that  no  marvel  can  prove  the  power  of 
God,  because  there  are  always  two  other  possible 
explanations,  fraud  or  the  devil,  men  often  honestly 
think,  even  in  this  day,  that  they  would  be  con- 
vinced of  divine  power  if  they  saw  a  "miraculous 
sign."  Jesus  calls  his  questioners  hypocrites; 
but  we  cannot  think  that  if  he  had  believed  them 
conscious  of  their  hypocrisy,  he  would  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  tell  them  the  underlying  character 
of  the  party  spirit  they  displayed.  The  very 
passion  of  his  denunciation  proves  that  he  saw 
they  gave  themselves  credit  for  good  intention; 
and  a  Church  which  during  long  periods  has 
lauded  the  works  of  Jesus  merely  as  signs  of 
supernatural  power  cannot  condemn  their  demand. 
It  could  not  have  been  because  of  their  personal 
depravity  that  Jesus  treated  this  request  of  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees  with  contempt,  because  we 

xSt.  Matt.  xii.  38,  xvi.  !;   St.  Mark  via,  H. 


28        HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

are  told  he  rejected  the  desire  of  a  mixed 
multitude  for  the  same  aid  to  faith  with  the 
same  reproach.1  We  should  surely  be  justified 
in  learning  from  these  incidents  alone  that  it  was 
not  any  miraculous  character  of  his  works  by 
which  Jesus  asked  to  be  judged,  but  by  their 
other  qualities  of  personal  power  and  unsparing 
love. 

There  are  other  passages,  belonging,  according 
to  many  critics,  to  the  same  original  substratum 
of  the  Christian  evangel,  which  show  that  the 
miraculous  element  was  not  in  the  mind  of  Jesus 
a  feature  of  his  works  and  signs.  In  the  com- 
missions to  the  Twelve  and  the  Seventy  the 
command  to  heal  disease  and  to  cast  out  devils 
goes  to  prove  that  in  respect  to  such  powers 
Jesus  did  not  think  of  himself  as  unique.  Of 
like  tenor  is  the  passage  in  which  he  freely 
concedes  to  the  sons  of  the  Jews  a  like  power.2 
But  much  stronger  evidence  on  the  point  is  the 
fact  that  he  required  a  certain  psychical  condition 
in  which  to  work  —  faith,  individual  and  corporate. 
This  prevents  us  laying  emphasis  on  the  miraculous 
nature  of  the  work  if  we  accept  as  the  scientific 
test  of  a  miracle  that  laid  down  by  J.  S.  Mill  — 
"Were  there  present  in  the  case  such  external 
conditions,  such  second  causes,  as  we  may  call 
them,  that  whenever  these  conditions  and  causes 
reappear  the  event  will  be  reproduced  ?  If  there 
were,  it  is  not  a  miracle;  if  there  were  not,  it 
is."     Jesus    certainly    taught    that   whenever    the 

1  St.  Luke  xi.  29. 

2  St.  Matt.  xii.  27;  St.  Luke  xi.  19. 


chap,  in    THE   ACTIONS    OF    JESUS  29 

right  faith  was  exercised  the  same  marvels  would 
result. 

Although  critics  differ  as  to  the  antiquity  and 
authenticity  of  some  of  the   passages   quoted   in 
this    chapter    it   remains    true    that   we    have    no 
history  of  Jesus,  even  the  earliest  and  most  scanty, 
that    does    not    make    his    wonderful    works    an 
essential    part   of  the   gospel.     The   most   ample 
tradition    we    have    of   him    does    not    lay    more 
proportionate  stress  upon  his  benevolent  marvels 
than  does  the  most  meagre.     If  we  would  under- 
stand the  ministry  of  Jesus  as  he  understood  it 
we    must    not    minimise    the    importance    of   his 
works,  but  study  their  significance,  which  does  not 
depend  on  the  assumption  that  they  are  miraculous. 
As   the   messenger   of  God    Jesus   went   about 
showing  how  God's  will  is  to  be  done  on  earth 
as  in  heaven.     All  hopes  of  heaven  include  these  — 
forgiveness,    love,    joy,    self-control,    and    health; 
Jesus  spent  himself  showing  how  ready  God  was 
to  bestow  these  in  response  to  faith.     This  great 
revelation  -— -  that  all  wrath  and  misery  were  hostile 
to  God's  will  —  was  necessary  to  knit  man's  heart 
to    God;     it   was   the   outfit   required   for    a   new 
start  in  God's  service.     It  was,  indeed,  the  defini- 
tion  of  service,   for  it   had   for  its   negative   side 
the    doctrine   that   all   the   penalties   of  sin  —  all 
hatred,  oppression,  want,  infirmity,  and  disease  — 
proceeded    from    a    source    of   volitional    evil    at 
enmity  with  God,  and  were  to  be  vanquished  and 
cast  out  by  the  victory  of  faith. 


CHAPTER   IV 

FAITH 

Faith  is  the  human  equipment  needed  for  life 
in  the  kingdom  which  Jesus  inaugurated.  What 
is  faith  ? 

The  simplest  activities  of  the  human  heart 
cannot  be  known  except  by  experience.  How  is 
it  possible  to  teach  the  mind  what  love  is  when  the 
heart  is  self-centred,  or  explain  hatred  to  a  happy 
child  ?  But  as  far  as  the  character  of  faith  can  be 
put  into  words,  most  of  us  would  agree  in  saying 
that  faith  largely  consists  in  a  true  estimate  of 
those  qualities  of  personality  which,  of  their  very 
nature,  are  hidden  from  sense,  and  the  exercise  of 
faith  is  any  activity  based  on  this  estimate.  Super- 
stition, we  may  add,  must  involve  a  false  estimate 
of  those  same  personal  qualities.  (In  making  such 
"true  estimate"  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  not 
only  intelligence  but  emotion  and  volition  are 
involved.) 

Can  we  briefly  consider  this  without  being  trite 
on  a  well-worn  subject  ?  Take  an  elementary 
instance.  A  savage  disabled  in  a  solitary  place 
might  put  faith  in  his  dog,  sending  him  to  fetch 


chap,  iv  FAITH 


3i 


aid.  If,  however,  the  dog  had  been  trained  into 
a  mechanical  habit  of  bringing  aid,  the  reliance 
placed  in  him  by  his  master  would  not  be  faith, 
but  the  sort  of  confidence  we  have  in  the  properties 
of  inanimate  things  and  mechanical  laws.  He 
could  only  have  faith  in  the  dog's  spontaneous 
action  in  so  far  as  it  had  evinced  personal  qualities, 
and  in  so  far  as  he  could  detect  sagacity  and  good 
will  from  its  general  conduct.  Hope  would  rise 
to  faith  if  the  dog  had  displayed  these  qualities 
in  a  high  degree,  and  more  especially  if  the  man 
belonged  to  a  tribe  where  all  were  in  the  habit 
of  trusting  to  the  sagacity  and  affection  of  dogs 
in  emergencies. 

Faith  in  the  dog  would  involve  observation, 
memory,  and  an  inference  of  reason  from  what  the 
man  knew  of  this  and  other  dogs.  In  the  last 
analysis  his  faith,  true  or  false,  would  be  his 
estimate  of  such  personal  character  as  the  dog 
possessed.  His  exercise  of  faith  would  be  activity 
based  on  this  estimate;  and  it  would  involve  in 
the  man  courage  and  purpose,  for  despondency 
and  lack  of  purpose  produce  a  mental  inactivity 
which  would  eat  into  the  truest  faith. 

In  this  simple  case  we  see  how  the  man  who 
could  best  gauge  the  qualities  of  his  dog  would 
himself  have  those  qualities  which  make  men  fittest 
to  survive,  and  that  the  faith  that  would  sustain 
such  a  man  in  such  a  period  of  waiting  would  be 
most  perfectly  exercised  when  he  had  the  best  use 
of  all  his  mental  powers. 

In  this  case,  however,  the  advantage  of  faith 
would  be  purely  subjective.     It  would  hinder  the 


32        HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS    book  i 

suffering  man  from  sinking  under  despair,  but 
could  have  no  effect  upon  the  fidelity  of  the  dog. 
Imagine  a  fellow-man  in  the  place  of  the  dog.  Faith 
on  the  part  of  the  sufferer  would  not  be  changed 
in  quality,  although  it  might  be  in  degree,  but  that 
faith  would  have  effect  upon  the  messenger.  If  he 
were  good-hearted,  the  fact  that  his  injured  fellow 
had  faith  in  him  would  add  a  strong  motive  to 
natural  compassion.  Such  trust,  however,  could 
not  evoke  in  him  qualities  which  were  not  there, 
nor  alter  physical  circumstance.  What  effect  then, 
other  than  subjective,  would  the  exercise  of  faith 
have  ?  It  would,  for  the  hour,  knit  the  purpose 
and  desire  of  the  two  men  into  one.  The  more 
unquestioning  the  faith  of  the  injured,  the  more 
responsive  the  messenger,  the  more  absolute  would 
be  their  oneness  —  the  courage,  the  purpose,  the 
hope  and  heart  of  the  two  acting  as  one  against  all 
opposing  forces,  mental  and  physical.  Here  we 
come  on  the  first  trace  of  the  law  governing 
corporate  life.  This  more  than  single  strength  of 
a  man  at  one  with  another  is  no  fantastic  notion, 
but  a  commonplace  of  daily  life.  Which  of  us,  as 
a  child,  has  not  been  toppling  on  some  forbidden 
height,  unbalanced,  about  to  fall,  and  been  made 
perfectly  secure  again  by  a  cheerful  word  or  the 
mere  touch  of  a  kindly  finger-tip  ?  Which  of  us 
has  not  seen  a  futile  man  made  effectual  in  pro- 
fessional and  public  life  by  obtaining  a  good  wife, 
who  vet  never  appears  with  him  in  the  street,  the 
exchange,  or  assembly  ?  Which  of  us  has  not  been 
ready  to  give  up  an  enterprise  in  which  the  odds 
were  against  us,  and  been  heartened  to  go  on  by 


chap,  iv  FAITH  33 

realising  that  we  had  the  backing  of  one  other 
human  will  ? 

Let  us  here  note  that  in  thinking  men  this 
oneness  produced  by  faith  must  for  "the  special 
purpose  extend  to  opinion.  To  return  to  our 
illustration,  it  is  evident  that  the  sufferer  must  be 
convinced,  not  only  as  to  the  ability  and  fidelity 
of  his  friend,  but  as  to  his  thoughts  and  theories 
on  the  matter.  The  messenger  might  conceivably 
believe  lonely  pain  to  be  a  moral  benefit.  In  such 
a  case  the  sufferer  could  not  have  the  same  con- 
fidence; resignation  would  take  the  place  of  hope. 
Or  suppose  that  the  sufferer  knew  that  his  friend 
would  regard  the  succour  as  wholly  desirable,  but 
would  regard  his  case  as  of  small  proportionate 
importance  compared  with  other  manifold  claims 
upon  his  attention  and  energy.  Again  he  could 
not  feel  the  same  confidence  as  if  he  knew  that  the 
claim  of  his  sad  position  would  absorb  his  friend's 
attention  till  succour  was  obtained. 

The  occasion  of  faith  which  we  have  been  con- 
sidering is  the  simplest,  and  must  necessarily  lie  at 
the  beginning  of  all  our  education  in  faith.  To 
he  in  bodily  helplessness  and  rely  upon  the  aid  of 
love  is  the  primary  attitude  of  mind  in  the  most 
formative  years  of  childhood.  In  further  con- 
sidering the  nature  of  faith  we  must  have  regard  to 
the  more  complex  occasions  of  faith  between  man 
and  man,  and  to  the  growth  and  culmination  of 
the  life  of  faith  between  men  —  friendship.  There 
is,  of  course,  in  any  human  friendship  much  of  that 
reliance  which  is  born  of  knowledge.  We  trust  a 
friend,  in  a  multitude  of  instances,  just  as  we  trust 


34        HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

a  stout  stick  or  a  strong  rope,  a  ferry-man  or  a  cab- 
driver,  knowing  enough  of  the  properties  of  each 
to  know  that  they  will  be  all  that  we  require  in 
certain  circumstances.  Over  and  above  the  pro- 
perties of  which  we  have  knowledge  there  are 
qualities  in  every  man  concerning  which 

We  have  but  faith;  we  cannot  know; 
For  knowledge  is  of  things  we  see. 

It  is  only  that  element  in  personality  which  appears 
to  act  spontaneously  in  which  we  can  have  faith, 
that  element  in  whose  actions  we  descry  an  inner 
unity  upon  diverse  occasions  where  outward  unity 
is  impossible.  In  the  story  of  Gethsemane,  when 
Jesus  says  to  the  sleeping  three,  "The  spirit  is 
willing,  but  the  flesh  is  weak,"  he  evinces  faith  in 
hidden  elements  of  character,  hidden  in  the  past 
under  selfish  rivalries  and  claims  for  reward,  and 
now  under  the  desertion  and  denial  he  had  him- 
self prophesied  as  at  hand.  Yet  by  action  based 
on  such  estimate  of  his  followers,  he,  humanly 
speaking,  conquered  the  civilised  world.  Or,  to 
take  a  widely  different  case,  Leonidas  and  his 
three  hundred  would  have  been  as  grass  before  the 
wind  had  it  not  been  for  mutual  faith.  Every 
Thermopylae  the  world  has  seen  has  been  possible 
because  men  did  at  times  trust  men  to  stand  against 
all  the  manifold  claims  of  individual  self-interest. 
The  best  incidents  in  a  life  like  that  of  the  patriot 
Hampden  are  the  outcome  of  faith  in  the  untried 
capacity  of  his  neighbours  to  rise  to  new  responsi- 
bilities. All  measures  of  self-government  by  which 
the  race  has  advanced  have  been  the  result  of  man's 


chap,  iv  FAITH 


35 


faith  in  man  to  become  something  more  than  he 
has  been.  The  best  relations  of  life,  on  which  the 
fabric  of  our  progress  rests,  are  built  of  this  faith. 
It  is  that  that  makes  the  difference  between  the 
Western  home  and  the  Eastern  harem. 

Further,  we  can  easily  perceive,  in  any  friend- 
ship that  through  a  lifetime  depends  daily  upon 
another's  good  will  unbiassed  by  selfish  interests, 
that  as  each  year  passes,  and  every  energy  is  called 
into  play  by  communion,  and  each  acquires  a  closer 
understanding  of  the  other,  this  life  of  faith,  faith 
of  each  in  the  other,  while  engaging  all  the  faculties 
men  have,  will  at  last  be  what  it  was  at  first,  an 
estimate  —  an  estimate  truer  and  often  higher,  but 
of  the  same  kind.  And  while  such  a  friendship 
commonly  begins  with  prayer  —  need,  request, 
service,  that  only  at  first  —  at  last  it  will  not  have 
grown  beyond  the  occasions  of  need  and  service, 
even  although  it  also  means  much  more  of  mutual 
communion  beside.  The  elementary  exercises  of 
faith  —  petition  and  response  —  will  ever  be  more 
frequent,  more  unconscious,  more  perfect,  when 
the  friendship  has  permeated  larger  areas  of  the 
mutual  life.  The  estimate  of  another  which  is  the 
product  of  a  lifetime  of  mutual  understanding 
will  be  more  accurate;  its  superstitions  will  have 
dropped  off,  its  truth  be  established.  It  will  also 
be  different  in  scope,  and  its  assurance  will  have 
permeated  the  whole  nature,  conscious  and  un- 
conscious; but  it  will  remain  an  estimate  of  the 
unseen  personal  qualities  of  the  friend. 

It  will,  perhaps,   be    said   that  faith  is  not   so 
much  an  estimate  of  personal  character  as  a  high 


36       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

estimate.  But  reflection  shows  that  it  requires 
only  to  be  a  true  estimate.  If  a  character  is 
variable  and  unstable,  an  estimate  that  regards  him 
as  reliable  is  superstitious.  To  believe  in  his 
instability,  if  indeed  he  be  unstable,  is  the  only 
basis  of  right  dealing  with  such  a  person.  If, 
however,  there  be  a  degree  of  stability  under  the 
instability,  that  also  must  be  reckoned  with  in  the 
estimate.  Or  let  us  take  the  case  of  a  character 
wholly  bad.  An  accurate  estimate  of  his  wicked- 
ness is  the  faith  required  for  dealing  with  him; 
to  question  the  wickedness,  to  act  upon  a  hope 
or  supposition  of  something  else,  would  be  a  false 
faith.  For  example,  when  Jesus  said  that  " Satan" 
could  not  do  good,  he  taught  a  faith  in  the  uniform 
nature  of  evil  as  well  as  of  good.  Had  the  Church 
ceased  to  attribute  physical  goods  to  "the  devil" 
she  would  have  gained  much. 

But,  again,  it  will  be  said  that  we  do  speak  of 
faith  as  being  great  or  little  in  quantity,  whereas 
we  cannot  quantify  the  mental  vision  we  call  an 
estimate.  But  we  can  have  vigour  or  feebleness 
in  any  mental  process,  and  in  all  the  activities  based 
on  that  process.  It  is  possible  for  a  man  to  have 
an  estimate  of  another  which  is  not  false  and  yet 
is  shadowy  compared  with  his  estimate  of  himself 
or  of  forces  on  which  he  must  rely.  And  indeed 
there  are  men  who  live  through  all  the  relations  of 
life  and  never  realise  personality  sufficiently  to  deal 
with  persons  in  any  other  way  than  as  they  deal 
with  variable  natural  forces  —  such  as  wind  and 
weather,  which  a  man  may  utilise  but  cannot  count 
upon.     Such    a   man   cannot   be   said    to   have  a 


chap,  iv  FAITH  37 

superstitious  estimate  of  the  character  of  his  fellows. 
What  he  lacks  is  vigour  of  thought  as  applied 
to  character,  vigour  of  observation  in  mustering 
given  data,  vigour  of  desire  for  more  than  is  seen, 
vigour  of  that  fine  co-operation  of  all  his  powers 
which  fetches  from  the  unseen  something  just 
beyond  the  logical  inference  from  given  data.  He 
is  a  man  not  of  false  faith  but  of  little  faith.  His 
whole  nature  could  be  employed  in  forming  a 
greater  faith,  a  more  vigorous  estimate,  on  which 
he  could  not  but  act. 

To  take  an  example  from  our  New  Testament: 
when  Jesus  said,  "  I  have  not   seen  so  great  faith, 
no,  not  in  Israel"  he  was  speaking  to  a  man  who 
had  evidently  exercised  vigorous  thought  concern- 
ing the  power  by  which  Jesus  cured  disease.     He 
argued  that  the  power  Jesus  exercised  over  the 
health  and  disease  of  those  brought  into  his  pres- 
ence was  not  a  physical  but  a  spiritual  power,  and 
therefore,  he  concluded,  presence  or  absence  could 
make  no  difference.     "Speak  the  word  only  and 
my  servant  (who  lies  at  a  distance)  shall  be  healed." 
When    Jesus    repeatedly    used    his    reproachful 
formula,  "Oh  ye  of  little  faith,"  he  seems  usually 
to    have    been    chiding,    not    so    much    a    wrong 
estimate  of  his  own  character  or  of  the  Father's,  as 
vagueness  and  inactivity  of  thought  which  allows 
the  attention  to   be   diverted   from   the  object  of 
faith  to  the  causes  of  fear.     It  is  clear,  for  example, 
that  in  the  story  of  Peter's  walking  on  the  water, 
the  disciple  could  not  have  altered  his  estimate  of 
our  Lord's  power  because  the  waves  were  boisterous. 
That  estimate  must  have  been  one  that  inspired 


38        HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS    book  i 

absolute  trust,  or  he  would  never  have  got  out  of 
his  ship.  What  happened  was  that  the  grasp  of 
his  mind  and  will  upon  what  he  knew  to  be  the 
life-force  of  Jesus  relaxed  when  he  gave  his  atten- 
tion to  danger;  the  power  that  union  of  will  and 
thought  with  Jesus  gave  was  lost  because  such 
corporate  union  must  be  mutual. 

There  is  one  very  important  fact  to  be  observed 
concerning  the  quality  of  faith  that  a  man  exercises 
in  his  fellow-creatures ;  it  is  not  determined  merely 
by  his  individual  qualities;  it  rises  or  falls  with  the 
standards  of  the  community  in  which  he  lives. 
Here,  again,  we  learn  a  law  of  the  corporate  life. 
For  example,  in  a  land  where  men  habitually  shut 
up  their  women,  it  would  be  difficult,  almost 
impossible,  for  one  man  to  set  his  women  at  large 
and  never  feel  the  slightest  suspicion  concerning 
their  affections  or  behaviour,  however  trustworthy 
they  might  be.  Suspicious  thoughts  would  intrude 
at  times,  no  matter  how  high  he  might  at  other 
times  rise  above  them,  and  we  all  admit  that  he 
would  be,  not  an  average,  but  a  remarkable  man 
to  rise  above  them  at  all.  Or  again,  in  a  com- 
munity where  men  habitually  doubted  the  honesty 
of  their  fellows,  a  man  who  should  place  confidence 
in  a  friend  beyond  the  limit  of  mutual  self-interest 
would  naturally  be  beset  by  inward  suspicions. 
To  hold  to  such  a  course  in  defiance  of  suspicion 
would  perhaps  be  the  highest  degree  of  friendship 
to  which  he  could  attain. 

It  is  very  natural  that  in  matters  of  faith  a 
man  should  thus  be  greatly  dependent  on  his 
environment,  for  he  is  very  dependent  on  it  for 


chap,  iv  FAITH  39 

the  degree  in  which  he  realises  matters  of  fact 
—  fact  either  of  sensuous  experience  or  logical 
inference.  Fashions  in  taste  and  philosophy 
change  the  face  of  the  natural  universe  for  man. 
One  generation  does  not  see,  much  less  notice,  the 
beauties  of  nature;  in  another  generation,  of  the 
same  nation  in  the  same  climate,  we  find  aesthetic 
joy  in  nature  common,  even  children  and  the  un- 
educated observing  the  earth's  beauty.  In  the 
ancient  Roman  world  the  only  landscape  that  was 
admirable  was  the  flat  and  fertile  plain,  where 
transit  was  easy  and  cultivation  remunerative. 
The  mountains  stood  for  hardship  and  peril,  and 
were  merely  ugly  in  their  cruelty.  Again,  in  each 
generation  we  find  men  actually  aware  only  of  such 
facts  of  life  as  fit  into  the  philosophy  of  their  age. 
Eclecticism  in  observation  and  inference  is  one  of 
the  most  salient  characteristics  of  the  Zeitgeist. 
Hence  arises  the  difficulty  of  the  historian  who, 
when  he  would  depict  a  bygone  age,  finds  that  no 
record  of  the  time  is  impartial,  either  in  the  facts  it 
records  or  the  inferences  it  makes.  Nor  can  he  be 
sure  of  arriving  at  the  whole  truth  by  balancing 
one  chronicler  against  another,  because  the  cor- 
porate thought  and  corporate  prejudices  of  the  age 
colour  every  source  of  information,  and  must,  so 
far  as  they  can  be  ascertained,  be  allowed  for. 

Now  if  this  be  the  case  in  the  attempt  to 
observe  plain  matters  of  fact,  how  much  more 
must  it  be  the  case  when  man  seeks  to  exercise 
powers  additional  to  those  of  sense  and  logic, 
reaching  out  to  the  unseen  self  within  his  fellow- 
man.     Faith,   like  abstract  reasoning,   is   a  more 


4o       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

recently  developed  power  than  the  senses  we  have 
in  common  with  low  forms  of  life  and  the  sagacity 
we  share  with  intelligent  brutes;  for  that  reason 
we  are  more  uncertain  in  its  exercise  and  more 
dependent  on  the  corporate  atmosphere  within 
which  we  exercise  it. 

Another  notable  characteristic  of  faith  is  that 
even  when  a  man  bases  his  ordinary  actions  upon 
it  he  can  seldom  reckon  up  his  own  faith.  We 
are  all  conscious  at  times  of  being  surprised,  in 
some  sudden  moment  of  insight,  by  finding  that 
we  trust  some  individual  more  or  less  than  we 
supposed.  In  some  crucial  moment  a  man  dis- 
covers how  little  he  has  known  his  own  mind  with 
regard  to  the  comparative  worth  of  neighbours  or 
friends.  Most  of  us  are  sincerely  under  the  im- 
pression that  we  would  trust  all  whom  we  have 
admitted  to  the  inner  circle  of  friendship  against 
all  appearances;  but  we  are  forced  to  admit  that 
in  cases  where  serious  accusation  is  made,  and 
supported  by  evidence  to  others  convincing,  he  is 
a  rare  man  who  does  not  know  the  agony  of  doubt. 
When  no  such  crucial  hour  of  self-revelation  occurs 
in  a  man's  life  there  is  a  fair  presumption  that  he 
may  be,  from  first  to  last,  unconscious  of  the 
precise  quality  of  the  estimate  he  really  makes  of 
his  fellow-man. 

Man's  faith  in  God  cannot  be  different  in  kind 
from  his  faith  in  man.  Since  it  is  only  personal 
attributes  that  can  evoke  faith,  faith  in  God  is  only 
possible  when  man  regards  God's  character  as  in 
some  sense  "in  the  image"  of  his  own.  It  follows 
that  in  so  far  as  man  conceives  God  as  force,  or 


chap,  iv  FAITH  41 

substance,  or  anything  other  than  personal,  the 
reliance  he  can  place  in  him  will  be  inferior  to  that 
he  places  in  a  person;  it  will  be  the  reliance  he 
places  in  law  or  in  the  properties  of  matter.  We 
are  all  aware  that  this  sort  of  reliance  is  the  peril 
of  any  religious  system  that  has  the  appearance 
of  mechanical  working,  as,  for  example,  a  system 
involving  the  uniform  inspiration  of  a  literature,  or 
the  uniform  working  of  certain  rites  and  privileges. 
Although  reliance  in  a  salvation  thus  partly 
mechanical  certainly  does  not  exclude  the  highest 
faith,  yet,  as  we  all  know,  it  is  fatally  easy  to  trust 
to  such  an  artificial  religious  theory  as  must  be 
composed  by  finding  a  favourite  doctrine  in  every 
book  of  the  Bible,  or  to  trust  to  the  efficacy  of 
sacraments  to  ensure  future  salvation  just  as  one 
would  trust  a  cab  or  a  ferry-boat  to  land  one  at 
the  rio-ht  destination. 

But  to  return,  our  point  is  that  man's  faith  in  a 
personal  God  is  identical  with  the  estimate  he 
forms  of  God's  character  by  reaching  beyond  what 
he  can  learn  of  God  in  creation.  But  the  estimate 
of  faith  is  not  independent  of  what  we  learn  of 
God  in  creation.  On  the  contrary,  just  as  the 
simplest  exercise  of  faith  tov/ard  a  fellow-man  is 
based  on  all  the  data  we  have  concerning  his 
thoughts,  his  emotions,  and  his  will,  so  faith  in  God 
must  be  based  on  all  the  data  we  have  concerning 
him  in  the  universe,  which  is  his  visible  action. 
Even  in  a  child,  faith  in  God  must  be  in  part  derived 
from  the  notion  he  forms  of  the  universe,  includ- 
ing of  course  the  persons  about  him. 

That  estimate  of  God  embodied  in  our  faith  is, 


42       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

then,  in  part  an  inference  of  reason  from  what  we 
know  of  nature,  especially  human  nature,  and  of 
all  the  facts  that  bear  on  the  religious  life.  But  it 
is,  even  at  the  outset,  more  than  that,  just  as  a 
man's  faith  in  the  fidelity  of  a  dog,  or  the  love  of 
a  life-long  friend,  is  more  than  anything  that  can 
be  wrested  by  logical  process  from  given  data. 
Man's  faith  in  God  not  only  involves  his  notion 
of  the  whole  of  nature,  but  is  the  outcome  of  his 
whole  nature.  For  if  all  that  he  is  and  does  goes 
to  make  up  and  to  modify  his  estimate  of  the 
hidden  personality  in  his  brother,  it  must  also 
make  and  modify  his  estimate  of  the  hidden 
personality  of  supreme  Love.  It  can  never  be 
merely  the  exercise  of  an  extra  power.  It  is  an 
outcome  of  the  whole  man;  it  is  the  highest  out- 
come, requiring  practice  in  mundane  faith  before 
it  can  attain  to  God.  The  well-known  axiom  of 
the  Johannine  epistle  holds  good  —  if  a  man  does 
not  put  faith  in  his  brother  whom  he  has  seen,  he 
cannot,  in  any  real,  practical  way,  put  faith  in  God 
whom  he  has  not  seen.   • 

All  that  we  have  been  saying  is  that  faith  is  the 
view  of  God  taken  by  the  mind's  eye,  which  was 
the  figure  used  by  Jesus.  We  may,  with  equal 
truth  of  analogy,  speak  of  the  light  of  a  house 
being  the  window,  or  the  condition  in  which  the 
window  is  kept,  or  the  light  that  shines  in  at  the 
window.  The  light  of  the  mind  is  the  mind's 
eye,  or  the  correctness  of  the  mental  vision,  or  the 
objective  reality  the  mind  is  able  to  apprehend. 
"If  thine  eye  be  single  thy  whole  body  shall  be 
full    of   light."     The    leper   who    accosted    Jesus 


chap,  iv  FAITH  43 

saying,  "If  thou  wilt  thou  canst  make  me  clean," 
had  a  true  and  vigorous  estimate  of  Jesus  that  was 
only  half  the  truth.  Jesus  went  so  far  as  to  touch 
him  —  unheard  of  mercy  to  a  leper  —  in  saying,  "I 
will."  The  touch,  the  word,  made  the  leper's 
estimate  as  to  power  and  will  complete;  with 
his  mind's  eye  he  saw  one  who  had  both  power 
and  determination  to  cure  him.  The  Syro- 
phenician  had  evidently  made  a  true  estimate  of 
Jesus  before  she  ignored  his  dismissal  with  her 
memorable  persistence.  The  Roman  captain  had 
a  definite  belief  concerning  the  authority  of  Jesus 
in  the  world  of  unseen  power.  In  the  particular 
in  which  these  were  seeking  help  their  whole  life 
was  full  of  light  because  their  sight  was  true. 

To  sum  up.  Faith  is  the  same  in  kind  whether 
exercised  toward  man  or  toward  God,  whether 
exercised  for  an  hour  or  for  a  lifetime.  Our 
power  of  faith  is  largely  dependent  on  our  human 
environment.  Our  actual  faith  is  usually  not 
prominent  in  consciousness,  so  that  a  man's  notion 
of  his  own  faith  is  not  worth  very  much.  It  is 
probably  greater  or  less  than  he  supposes.  Its 
test  must  be  its  result.  An  estimate  of  God's  love 
and  will  for  man  which  knits  man's  purpose  to 
the  purpose  of  God,  and  knits  the  purpose  of  each 
man  to  that  of  his  fellows,  is  invincible  strength  — 
is  the  supreme  victory  of  mind  over  chaos  —  is 
the  kingdom  of  God. 


CHAPTER  V 

CORPORATE    FAITH 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  implies  the  welding  of 
the  faith  of  many  into  one.  To  understand  what 
condition  is  needed  for  the  highest  corporate  faith 
in  God  we  must  turn  aside  and  consider  the  laws 
of  all  corporate  life. 

It  will  be  seen  that  in  this  chapter  we  are 
not  attempting  to  set  forth  the  integrity  of  the 
individual  life  —  a  truth  that  is  in  no  danger  of 
being  minimised  by  the  modern  temper.  We 
believe,  indeed,  that  the  only  philosophic  basis  for 
Christianity  is  the  conception  of  personality  as  the 
ultimate  factor  in  human  thought;  the  belief  that 
a  personal  intellect  can  alone  interpret  nature,  as 
a  personal  intelligence  could  alone  create  nature. 
But  just  as  we  have  no  experience  of  mind  except 
under  bodily  conditions,  so  we  have  no  experience 
at  all  of  individual  mind  except  as  influenced  by 
other  minds.  It  is  the  bearing  of  this  fact  on  the 
Christian  life  which  we  now  proceed  to  consider. 

A  race,  a  nation,  a  class,  an  orderly  crowd,  a 
riotous  mob  —  these  are  units  in  the  same  sense  in 
which  the  individual  is  a  unit.     A  man's  conscious 

44 


chap,  v  CORPORATE    FAITH 


45 


self  is  made  up  of  what  appears  to  be  many 
selves  —  wills  that  conflict,  thoughts  that  argue 
among  themselves  except  when  the  voice  of  the 
leader,  the  stronger  volition,  wins  a  whole-hearted 
response.  The  mind  as  an  individual  whole  forms 
a  different  object  of  study  from  its  separate  senti- 
ments and  volitions.  In  like  manner  a  body  of 
men  related  to  each  other  in  any  way  form  a  unit 
whose  faculties  are  not  the  same  as  those  of  the 
individuals  that  compose  it.  The  psychology  of 
the  corporate  life  is  not  that  of  the  individual  life. 
No  one  kind-hearted  man,  for  example,  could 
rejoice  in  the  death  of  a  stag  in  the  way  in  which 
a  crowd  of  hunters  will  rejoice  in  it.  It  is  well 
known  that  very  bad  men  in  a  crowded  theatre 
will  involuntarily  hiss  a  slight  defection  from  vir- 
tue on  the  part  of  a  hero.  It  is  not  the  aggregate 
of  their  individual  sentiments  that  such  men  ex- 
press. As  an  aggregate  they  have  different  senti- 
ments from  those  they  possess  as  individuals.  When 
reflecting,  they  have  different  powers  of  thought 
from  those  they  have  as  individuals;  when  in  action, 
the  combined  action  is  not  the  mere  sum  of  indi- 
vidual actions,  but  something  better  or  worse. 

Yet  although  the  individual  life  and  the  cor- 
porate life  may  be  shown  to  be  different,  they 
always  merge  into  and  react  on  one  another.  This 
chapter  is  concerned  with  the  effect  of  the  cor- 
porate life  on  the  individual.  A  man  has  not  the 
same  mind  when  with  one  neighbour  as  when  with 
another.  When  with  them  both  his  mind  undergoes 
another  modification.  When  he  lives  in  a  village 
his  mind  is  modified  by  the  pull  of  the  common 


46       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

soul  of  that  village.  When  he  goes  up  to  the  town 
the  larger  environment  again  affects  him  visibly 
if  not  consciously.  All  this  has  been  proved  so 
often  that  it  needs  repetition  here  only  in  order 
to  observe  that  a  body  of  men  forming  a  church 
must  come  under  the  same  psychological  laws  as 
govern  the  same  men  in  other  aggregates. 

Further,  it  is  not  necessary  that  men  should 
visibly  herd  together  to  experience  the  corporate 
influence.  There  is  abundant  evidence  that  there 
is  a  force  which  causes  one  man  to  think  as  his 
neighbour  thinks,  divided  though  they  be  by  the 
walls  of  their  separate  houses  or  by  miles  of  inter- 
vening country,  without  conscious  communication, 
and  without  access  to  the  same  visible  sources  of 
influence,  —  a  force  as  invisible  but  as  certainly 
operative  as  gravitation.  We  know  that  every 
stone  lying  on  a  tract  of  land  many  miles  in  extent 
exercises  a  certain  attraction  for  every  other  stone. 
We  do  not  dispute  this  physical  law,  even  though 
we  only  see  the  effect  of  its  operation  in  certain  ex- 
aggerated conditions  —  as,  for  example,  when  near 
a  high  mass  of  rock,  the  plumb-line  hangs  aslant. 
The  present  writer  knows  a  case  of  a  woman  who 
very  frequently  awoke  on  Sunday  morning  repeat- 
ing to  herself  certain  formulas  of  prayer.  They 
were  not  familiar  to  her,  and  were  never  alike  two 
Sundays  in  succession.  After  some  time  she  dis- 
covered that  they  were  scraps  from  the  Anglican 
collect  for  the  day.  It  is  true  that  she  must  have 
heard  the  collects,  though  she  had  never  studied 
them;  but  she  certainly  had  no  knowledge  at  all 
of  their  order  in  the  Christian  year.     We  cannot 


chap,  v  CORPORATE    FAITH  47 

reasonably  doubt  that  if  the  actual  words  of  the 
many  could  thus  upon  rare  occasion  press  into  the 
consciousness  of  one  without  visible  communica- 
tion, the  mental  inclination  of  the  many  behind 
the  words  would  have  a  much  commoner,  if  still 
more  subtle,  effect  upon  the  one. 

The  forces  which  govern  man's  corporate  life 
are  those  which  work  chiefly  upon  the  latent 
powers  of  his  being.1  We  are  only  beginning  to 
discern  them.  Take,  for  example,  the  fact  that 
it  is  easy  to  teach  an  ignorant  child  of  ignorant 
parents  to-day  some  conception  current  in  our 
decade  which  the  most  brilliant  men  a  century 
ago  only  grasped  with  effort.  Is  telepathy  the 
cause  of  this  ?  contagion  of  thought  or  feeling  ? 
suggestibility  ?  These  are  words  of  which  the 
connotation  is  as  yet  imperfect,  although  by  the 
realities  which  they  denote  we  all  live.  The 
strength  of  a  corporate  movement  among  men 
may  be  terrible  for  good  or  evil,  but  that  strength 
is  commonly  dissipated  by  the  counter  pull  of 
other  corporate  movements.     Thus,  a  man  who  is 

1  "What  can  be  more  complicated,  more  logical,  more  mar- 
vellous than  a  language  ?  Yet  whence  can  this  admirably  organ- 
ised production  have  arisen,  except  it  be  the  outcome  of  the 
unconscious  genius  of  crowds  ?  The  most  learned  scholars,  the 
most  esteemed  grammarians  can  do  no  more  than  note  down 
the  laws  that  govern  languages;  they  would  be  utterly  incapable 
of  creating  them.  Even  with  respect  to  the  ideas  of  great  men, 
are  we  certain  that  they  are  exclusively  the  offspring  of  their 
brains  ?  No  doubt  such  ideas  are  always  created  by  solitary 
minds,  but  is  it  not  the  genius  of  crowds  that  has  furnished  the 
thousands  of  grains  of  dust  forming  the  soil  in  which  they  have 
sprung  up  ?"  —  The  Crowd,  by  Gustave  Le  Bon,  p.  9. 


48        HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

a  Freemason,  a  Churchman,  a  citizen,  feels  the  pull 
of  each  communion;  and  in  so  far  as  the  interests 
of  each  are  different,  he  must  not  only  be  weaker 
in  each  but  must  weaken  each.  It  is  only  in  so 
far  as  the  pull  of  each  is  good  and  identical  with 
the  pull  of  the  others,  that  the  individual  can 
realise  the  whole  strength  of  his  personality,  can 
"possess  his  soul."  The  man  we  have  instanced 
cannot  obey  the  counsels  of  perfection  in  the 
Church  unless  he  is  also  obeying  them  in  the  State 
and  in  all  other  relationships.  He  cannot,  as  a 
Christian,  act  in  obedience  to  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  and  at  the  same  time,  as  a  citizen,  follow  a 
contradictory  code.  Moral  obliquity,  intellectual 
dulness,  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  effort.  The 
laws  which  God  has  made  to  govern  mind  are  as 
certain  in  their  operation  as  those  he  has  made  to 
govern  matter.  A  plumb-line  will  not  hang  true 
plumb  near  a  mountain;  the  attraction  of  the 
mountain  interferes  with  the  attraction  of  the 
earth.  A  man's  Christian  life  cannot  be  true  to 
the  demand  of  Jesus  if,  not  only  his  own  civic 
life,  but  that  of  his  fellows,  is  a  deflecting  mass. 

We  thus  see  that  probably  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  absolutely  independent  thought  or  feeling; 
nor  can  we  admit  the  recent  theorv  of  some 
psychologists  that  the  more  independent  the 
thought,  the  higher  its  level.  Although  the 
diseases  of  the  corporate  life,  i.e.,  mental  epidemics,1 
certainly  show   an   abnormal   dependence   of  one 

1  The  following  list  of  such  epidemics  is  given  in  The  Psy- 
chology of  Suggestion  by  Boris  Sidis  :  — 
Pilgrimage  epidemic,  1000-1095. 


chap,  v  CORPORATE    FAITH  49 

mind  on  another  as  their  most  prominent  symptom, 
this  does  not  prove  the  highest  degree  of  mental 
independence  to  be  the  highest  degree  of  mental 
health;  as  well  say  because  men  cannot  live  in 
a  tropical  sun  that  they  would  have  the  best 
health  in  the  lowest  temperature.  The  stern 
moralist  is  perhaps  the  highest  instance  of  in- 
dependent thought;  the  genius  is  perhaps  the 
highest  product  of  sympathy  with  the  world-mind. 
If  there  is  an  invisible  bond  of  union  between 
thoughts  of  saint  and  sinner,  of  Church  and  world, 
of  class  and  class,  of  nation  and  nation,  the  Church 
can  only  be  saved  in  the  degree  in  which  she  saves 
the  whole  world.  The  whole  race  is  corporate. 
A  mental  epidemic  does  not  strike  the  Christian 
with  one  folly  and  the  worldling  with  another. 
Out  they  go  together,  Christian  and  worldling,  to 
dance  the  tarantella,  to  burn  witches,  to  murder 
Jews,  to  invest  in  financial  bubbles,  to  march  to 
every  war   at  the   sound   of  trumpet   and   drum. 

Crusade  epidemic, 

1  Eastern  and  Western  crusades      1 
Children's  crusade  J  Vj       /   • 

Flagellant  epidemic,  1260-1348. 
Anti-Semitic  mania,  following  the  Black  Death,  1348. 

{St.  John's  dance,  1374. 
St.  Vitus'  dance,  1418. 
Tarantism,  1470  to  end  of  15th  century. 
Demonophobia,  or  Witchcraft  mania,  1488  to  end  of  17th 
century. 

{Tulipomania,  1634. 
The  Mississippi  Scheme,  1717. 
The  South   Sea   Bubble,   1720 — and 
business  bubbles  to  our  own  times. 
E 


5o       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

Likewise,  every  good  movement  by  which  the 
race  has  increased  its  power  of  compassion  and 
practice  of  justice  has  been  corporate.  Slowly, 
surely,  healthily,  the  racial  mind  has  moved,  per- 
mitting the  same  ideas  to  be  brought  to  birth 
often  at  the  same  time  in  lands  and  societies  visibly 
separated  one  from  another.  Legislation  —  which 
means  public  opinion  —  on  behalf  of  the  debtor, 
the  vanquished,  the  woman,  the  child,  the  slave, 
the  beast,  has  extended  in  ways  that  man's  con- 
scious political  agitations  only  half  explain.  When 
we  compare  the  religions,  the  ethics,  the  art,  and 
science,  of  many  and  most  diverse  nations,  beneath 
the  differences  that  arrest  the  shallow  and  lead  the 
reverent  to  look  deeper,  we  find  likenesses  that 
can  hardly  be  explained  except  by  the  great  fact 
of  corporate  unity.  Within  Christendom  pro- 
gressive movements  affect  alike  baptized  and  un- 
baptized.  Compassion  for  the  oppressed,  passion 
to  discover  truth  —  these,  whatever  local  and 
temporary  aspect  they  assume,  infect  mind  after 
mind  without  any  distinction  of  creed.  Therefore, 
since  every  man  is  liable  to  the  infection  of  his 
neighbour's  ideas,  be  they  good  or  bad,  wise  or 
mad,  the  Church  can  only  have  a  perfect  faith 
when  she  has  converted  the  world  to  a  perfect 
faith ;  and  her  degree  of  faith  in  any  place  and 
time  will  depend  on  the  convictions  she  is  evoking 
in  her  environment.  The  "serious  man"  did  not 
say  to  Wesley,  "You  must  not  serve  God  alone"; 
he  said,  "You  cannot";  and  the  psychology  of 
the  corporate  mind  bears  out  the  non  possumus  for 
each  one  of  us.     Jesus  strictly  enjoined  upon  every 


chap,  v  CORPORATE   FAITH  5i 

disciple   resignation   to    such    suffering   as    has    a 
directly  saving  effect  upon  the  world  —  the  bearing 
of  reproach  and  tyranny  in  the  spirit  of  love.     He 
does  not  say  that  men  who  will  not  endure  this 
redemptive   pain   must  not  count  themselves  his 
disciples;    he  says  they  cannot  be  his   disciples. 
It  is  not  possible,  even  to  God,  to  give  salvation  to 
a  man  who  is  not  ready  in  his  degree  to  be  a  saviour. 
All  his  plan  for  the  kingdom  shows  that  Jesus 
knewthat  individual  faith  is  dependent  on  corporate 
faith.     He  gave  a  glad,  almost  a  surprised,  wel- 
come, to  every  sign  of  individual  faith,  without 
criticism  of  its  lack,  and  levelled  constant  reproach 
against  the  nation,  the  generation,  and  the  religious 
classes  of  his  time  for  lack  of  faith.     If  faith  in 
God  is  the  highest  exercise  of  personal  power,  all 
history  shows  that  the  field  of  personal  power  is 
the  corporate  life.     When  the  corporate  life  is  at 
its  highest,  and  the  individual  is  most  closely  allied 
to  it,  his  individuality  is  at  its  strongest  and  his 
personal  powers  performing  their  highest  functions. 
Thus   we    have    seen    that   the    faith    of  every 
individual    is    dependent    upon    the    faith    of  his 
fellows,  more  dependent  on  the  faith  of  those  with 
whom  he  is  in  more  intimate  relation,  but  also  in 
some  degree  dependent  upon  the  corporate  faith 
of  the  whole  environment.     The  question  of  how 
far  the  human  will  is  determined  is  not  a  question 
simply  of  how  the  sequence  of  states  is  governed 
in  a  man's  own  mind.     If  he  could  enter  the  arena 
of  life   without   an    ancestry,   with   complete   will 
and  intelligence,  without  a  personal  past,  his  mental 
condition  would  still  be  determined  each  moment 


52       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

more  or  less  by  the  mental  condition  of  every  man 
who  treads  the  earth  with  him.  We  have  seen 
that  the  oftener  a  man  herds  with  the  same  crowd, 
the  less  he  can  resist  its  influence;  but  unless  he 
lives,  sleeps,  eats,  and  works  with  it,  its  influence 
must  be  greatly  modified  by  the  pull  of  every 
other  relation  of  his  life.  The  psychic  law  which 
governs  him  is  that  even  when  he  thinks  he  girds 
himself  and  goes  whither  he  will,  another  is  always 
girding  him  and  carrying  him  whither  he  will  not. 
The  laws  of  this  involuntary  brotherhood  have, 
of  course,  lent  themselves  to  every  organisation  by 
which  men  have  thought  to  create  brotherhood. 
Unless  the  race  were  a  unity,  no  monastic  order, 
no  army,  no  family,  no  nation,  no  empire, 
could  hold  together.  The  thrill  of  patriotism  or 
imperial  spirit  which  passes  from  man  to  man,  the 
sense  of  kinship  between  children  that  have  played 
around  one  hearth,  these  have  been  evidences  of 
the  inner  brotherhood  of  men  too  strong  to  escape 
notice,  and  are  the  forces  that  have  been  utilised 
in  every  organisation.  Such  bodies  as  had  any 
particular  object  have  used  a  partial  sense  of 
brotherhood  for  a  partial  end,  and  attained  success; 
but  organisations  which  have  Christianity  for  their 
nexus  have  an  interest  in  which  all  men  share,  a 
purpose  which  embraces  every  man.  They  have 
appeared  to  fail;  perhaps  because  they  have  not 
sufficiently  recognised  that  man's  religious  brother- 
hood is  essentially  and  intrinsically  universal.  It 
is  universal,  whether  he  desires  it  or  not,  and  a 
limiting  organisation  must  be  more  or  less  false  to 
the  truth  of  this,  and,  although  it  gain  its  whole 


chap,  v  CORPORATE   FAITH  53 

force  from  the  brotherhood  of  man,  must  run 
counter  to  its  essential  religious  aspect. 

If,  for  example,  we  have  a  certain  sectional 
community  in  a  certain  town,  the  sect  adheres  by 
the  natural  laws  which  govern  corporate  life. 
Usually  every  member  holds  the  doctrines  of  the 
sect  more  strongly  the  more  he  herds  with  its 
other  members,  and  the  more  he  endeavours  to 
isolate  himself  from  the  larger  interests  of  the 
town.  Unless  the  isolation  is  complete,  unless  he 
live  entirely  with  the  brethren  of  the  order,  the 
full  influence  of  the  sect  unit  on  the  individual 
unit  is  not  realised.  Let  us  see  to  what  this  leads 
us.  If  the  sect  taught  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth,  if  the  ideal  life  could 
be  lived  without  relation  to  the  outer  world,  its 
organisation  would  then  be  the  best  training, 
sphere,  and  home  for  the  individual.  But  what  is 
the  result  in  any  organisation  which  has  realised 
such  complete  union  in  isolation  as,  for  example, 
some  monastic  orders  ?  We  are  all  ready  to 
admit  that  the  result  is  not  the  realisation  by  its 
members  of  the  whole  truth  or  the  ideal  life.  At 
its  best  it  may  be  admitted  to  be  something  which 
has  its  niche  in  the  larger  brotherhood  and  the 
more  universal  ideal,  but  nothing  more.  No  one, 
not  even  an  advocate  of  such  an  order,  will  contend 
that  it  is  more  than  this  at  its  best.  At  its  worst, 
it  is  a  pest-house  of  mental  freaks.  Thus  we  see 
that  a  limited  union  and  isolation  at  their  highest 
in  a  religious  body  do  not  produce  the  best  type 
of  religious  brotherhood. 

Let  us  inquire  what  light  this  throws  on  any 


54       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

association  involving  some  degree  of  union  and  of 
isolation.  It  proves,  at  least,  that  some  relations 
with  the  outer  world  are  necessary  for  religious 
development.  The  general  view  of  the  Church  is 
that  she  must  maintain  relations  with  the  world 
if  only  because  she  must  exert  missionary  and 
charitable  activities.  She  has  not,  however,  evinced 
much  interest  in  learning  from  the  larger  sanity  of 
the  greater  number.  She  has  conceived  of  her 
relation  toward  the  world  as  that  of  teacher  only. 
She  has  sought  to  restrict,  as  far  as  possible,  her 
sense  of  companionship  with  the  world  to  a  sense 
of  the  world's  need  and  the  effort  to  supply  it. 
Christian  literature,  written  for  those  who  meet  the 
world  in  their  various  avocations,  has  gone  to 
emphasise  this  attitude.  Here  we  have  a  theory 
of  life  false  to  fact.  The  missioner,  preaching  to 
congregations  of  heathen  or  worldlings,  the  monk 
ministering  to  companies  of  vagrants,  the  devout 
lady  taking  her  dutiful  part  in  court  or  ball-room, 
all  these  return  to  their  cloister  or  closet  refreshed 
and  made  free  from  their  morbid  tendencies,  not 
so  much  by  their  own  activities  as  by  mere  contact 
with  a  fresh  and  wide  mental  atmosphere.  As 
they  stood  face  to  face  with  men  and  women  from 
the  boisterous  outer  world,  deep  answered  unto 
deep  in  their  souls.  Without  volition,  below 
consciousness,  the  laws  of  the  universal  brother- 
hood which  God  created  and  Jesus  blessed  worked 
to  give  them  as  much  as  they  could  receive  of  the 
strength  of  the  universal  mind. 

That   the   lives    of   devout    Christians    are    not 
regulated    by    the    desire    to    obtain    all    that   the 


chap,  v  CORPORATE    FAITH  55 

brotherhood  of  man  has  to  give  would  appear  to 
be  a  matter  of  great  moment,  not  only  because 
their  theory  puts  the  best  of  them  as  far  as  possible 
out  of  reach  of  the  benefit  of  the  race-soul  which 
they  ought  constantly  to  receive,  but  because  this 
theory  puts  the  Christian  out  of  harmony  with 
the  demand  of  Jesus,  whose  example  and  whose 
precepts  are  in  absolute  accord  with  the  universal 
religious  brotherhood  of  man. 

To  sum  up.  The  laws  of  corporate  life  form 
an  invisible  and  universal  bond,  and  complete 
independence  of  individual  faith  is  impossible; 
complete  independence  of  sectional  religious  life  is 
equally  impossible.  The  corporate  life  of  faith 
must  fall  under  the  same  laws  as  govern  all 
corporate  life. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    DOCTRINE    OF    PRAYER 

It  was  in  his  activities  for  human  relief  that  Jesus 
exemplified  the  certain  result  of  faithful  prayer. 
The  belief  about  prayer  almost  universal  in  the 
religious  world,  both  Jewish  and  pagan,  was  that 
when  man  had  exercised  repentance  and  obedience 
and  made  his  humble  petition  to  heaven  it  still 
rested  with  the  divine  will  to  give  or  to  withhold. 
This  was  a  most  natural  belief  so  long  as  men 
regarded  the  divine  nature  as  free  from  what  we 
might  call  principles  of  conduct,  or  as  possessing 
only  such  laws  of  character  as  were  and  must 
remain  hidden  from  human  understanding;  but 
Christian  writers  err  who  assume  that  Jesus  set  the 
seal  of  his  authority  to  it,  prevalent  as  it  was  in 
the  world  of  his  day.  In  the  most  ancient  litur- 
gies we  find  this  belief — that  uncertainty  always 
waited  upon  prayer  —  constantly  expressed  along 
with  beautiful  aspirations  of  penitence  and  faith. 
We  have  read  the  deciphered  prayers  of  "Assyrian 
kings  who  compose  monotonous  variations  upon 
the   three    themes   of  pride,    flattery,    and   fear." 

56 


ch.  vi    THE    DOCTRINE    OF    PRAYER     57 

And  this  anxiety  as  to  the  result,  the  heaping  up 
of  argument  in  anguish  lest  the  prayer  be  rejected, 
the  much  speaking  in  alternations  of  confidence 
and  solicitude,  are  also  the  characteristics  of  nearly 
all  the  most  exquisite  expressions  of  faith  in  all 
religions.  In  the  Hebrew  psalms  we  are  so  much 
accustomed  to  this  sort  of  prayer  that  we  almost 
fail  to  notice  it,  or  the  profound  contrast  between 
this  attitude  of  mind  and  that  expressed  in  that 
psalm  whose  parallelism  with  the  thought  of  Jesus 
is  so  striking. 

The  lord  is  my  shepherd.  Our  father  in  heaven. 

I  shall  not  want.  He  leads  Thy  kingdom  be  within  and 
me  in  green  pastures  and  by  around  us.  Thy  will  be 
waters  of  rest.  done    here     as    in     heaven. 

Give  us  our  daily  bread. 

He  restoreth  my  life.  Forgive  us  as  we  forgive. 

He  leadeth  in  right  paths.  Lead  us  aside  from  temptation. 

I  will  fear  no  evil.  Deliver  us  from  evil. 

Goodness  and  mercy  shall  All  things  whatsoever  ye  pray 
follow  me  always,  every-  and  ask  for,  believe  that  ye 
where,  have  received  them,  and  ye 

shall  have  them. 

All  ages  have  been  familiar  not  only  with  the 
ascription  of  arbitrariness  to  God  by  the  religious, 
but  also  with  their  reverent  method  of  accounting 
for  it  by  assuming  that  the  all-knowledge  of  God 
compared  with  the  ignorance  of  man  would  fre- 
quently make  God  reject  human  petitions  out  of 
kindness,  even  those  for  forgiveness  and  the  mere 
needs  of  life.  In  contrast  to  all  this  the  supreme 
originality  of  the  religious  genius  of  Jesus  is 
displayed     in    his     insight    into    the     uniformity 


58       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND   OURS     book  i 

of  law  in  the  religious  life.  It  is  evident  that 
he  had  pondered  deeply  certain  natural  sequences 
in  material  things  on  which  the  utility  of  man's 
labour  depended ;  and  he  certainly  grew  to  believe 
in  the  uniformity  of  divine  will  in  the  whole 
realm  of  personal  action. 

This  was  a  new  and  startling  conception,  so 
new  that  the  darkness  of  man's  unbelief  on  all 
sides  closed  in  on  this  ray  of  spiritual  light,  and 
even  now  it  often  seems  only  to  flash  hither  and 
thither  like  a  searchlight  in  a  dark  dawn.  Yet  it  is 
indeed  no  searchlight,  but  a  sun  destined  to  rise 
in  our  sky.  Jesus  regarded  faith  as  a  cause  which 
had  a  uniform  effect.  He  argues  that  where 
the  effect  is  the  cause  must  be,  and  where  the 
effect  is  not  the  cause  cannot  be.  His  formula,  so 
often  used,  "Thy  faith  hath  made  thee  whole,"  is 
an  argument  from  the  effect  to  the  cause,  addressed 
to  the  attention  of  all.  He  evidently  thought  it 
of  great  importance  that  his  hearers  should  observe 
that  the  effect  proved  the  cause.  Such  strong 
teaching  he  deals  out  to  learned  and  simple, 
losing,  it  would  seem,  no  opportunity  to  impress 
his  followers.  "According  to  your  faith  be  it 
unto  you."  "O  woman,  great  is  thy  faith  (there- 
fore) be  it  as  thou  wilt."  "I  have  not  seen  such 
faith  .  .  .  (therefore)  go  thy  way,  thy  son  liveth." 
Again,  he  unhesitatingly  asserts  lack  of  faith  to  be 
the  reason  why  some  desired  effect  was  not  pro- 
duced. When  the  disciples  tried  to  cure  the 
epileptic  boy  and  failed,  Jesus  was  not  present. 
They  had  before  this  been  away  from  him  on 
missions   of  healing,    and   without    his    presence 


ch.  vi     THE    DOCTRINE   OF    PRAYER     59 

had  constant  success.  Why  does  he  blame  them 
now  for  lack  of  faith  of  which  they  were  not 
conscious  ?  He  is  quite  sure  the  cause  is  lacking 
because  the  effect  is  not  produced  —  "  Because  of 
your  unbelief."  This  was  probably  another  of  his 
formulas;  it  was  deeply  impressed  on  the  minds 
of  the  evangelists  as  accounting  for  lack  of  benefit. 
To  these  sayings  we  must  add  the  words  of  advice 
he  gave  to  petitioners  whose  hope  wavered,  "  Be 
not  afraid;  only  believe."  "Believest  thou?  All 
things  are  possible  to  him  that  believeth."  Beside 
these  words  let  us  lay  the  promises  of  Jesus  —  in- 
discriminate, unmodified,  unstinted,  mad,  as  it 
would  seem,  in  their  calm  certainty  —  of  God's 
practical  response  to  human  confidence.  He  com- 
mends faith  as  a  sure  remedy  to  those  in  trouble. 
He  gives  positive  promises  of  the  divine  gifts  to  all 
who  will  ask  in  faith. 

All  this  is  something  different  indeed  from 
other  religious  thought.  Here  is  certainly  no 
encouragement  to  love  of  the  occasional  and 
marvellous,  no  enhancing  of  the  uncommon  to 
prove  a  doctrine.  Here  is  no  suggestion  that 
heaven  must  be  moved  out  of  its  usual  course 
by  wailing  liturgies  and  servile  rituals.  Still  less 
have  we  here  the  doctrine  of  resignation  to  all  the 
common  ills  of  life  as  the  highest  form  of  worship 
that  could  be  offered  to  the  divine  will.  All  these 
were  varieties  of  religion  that,  in  various  extremes 
and  combinations,  had  been  offered  to  Heaven 
from  every  tribe  and  kindred  since  man  first 
prayed,  and  are  still  offered. 

The  natural  sequences  of  sowing  and  growing, 


60       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

of  earning  and  gaining,  of  clouds  and  bad  weather, 
are  favourite  subjects  in  the  discourse  of  Jesus, 
but  in  dealing  with  them  he  constantly  suggests, 
what  is  well  known,  that  the  result  depends  on 
many  varying  conditions.  The  same  seed  may 
produce  nothing,  or  little,  or  much;  the  nicest 
calculations  of  gain,  or  of  weather,  may  be  dis- 
appointed. But  the  sequence  of  man's  personal 
faith  in  God  as  a  good  Father  and  the  personal 
gift  that  is  returned  by  God  he  speaks  of  always 
as  a  law  that  works  free  from  disturbance,  as  it 
were  with  mechanical  certainty.  Can  we,  then, 
for  a  moment  suppose  that  he  regarded  personality 
as  mechanical  ?  Did  he  regard  the  tide  of 
spiritual  life  that  flowed  through  him  or  through 
his  followers  as  coming  from  God  according  to 
some  psychical  law  which  worked  as  it  were 
automatically  ?  This  would  be  inconsistent  with 
his  intense  reverence  for  personality,  divine  and 
human,  and  is  on  all  grounds  unthinkable.  It  is 
evident  rather  that  Jesus  was  convinced  that 
abundant  life,  volitional,  mental,  and  physical, 
proceeded  from  the  Father's  will  always,  toward 
all  human  creatures;  that  this  flood  of  life,  falling 
like  sunshine,  needed  but  the  opening  of  the 
window  in  man's  understanding,  the  will  to 
estimate  God  aright,  the  will  to  pray,  the  will  to 
believe.  Man  can  only  shut  God  out;  when 
man's  heart  is  open  the  influx  of  divine  life  is  sure 
according  to  the  ever-active  purpose  of  God. 

The  popular  belief  in  the  uncertainty  of  prayer 
was,  and  is,  eating  like  a  maggot  into  human  faith 
everywhere.     Jesus,    contrary    to    popular    belief, 


ch.  vi     THE    DOCTRINE    OF    PRAYER     61 

taught  dependence  upon  the  absolute  uniformity 
of  God's  action.  His  doctrine  of  prayer,  as 
exemplified  in  his  works,  declares  that  certain  of 
man's  needs  God  will  supply  unfailingly  and 
without  delay  —  the  gift  of  forgiveness,  the  gift 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  i.e.,  God's  indwelling  support 
of  joy  and  power,  the  gift  of  health,  the  gift 
of  sanity  and  self-control.  Explaining  God's 
character  in  his  own  actions,  teaching  it  by  every 
reasoning  and  figure  that  his  people  could  under- 
stand, he  passed  up  and  down  the  land  for  three 
years,  proclaiming  the  invariable  nature  of  God's 
will,  encouraging  by  all  that  in  him  lay  —  character, 
action,  word  —  that  estimate  of  God  which  was 
the  only  human  condition  needed  to  ensure  the 
accomplishment  of  the  will  on  earth  as  it  is 
accomplished  in  heaven. 

How  reasonable  is  this  account  of  the  divine 
perfection !  A  wicked  man  looking  to  God  for 
restoration  of  soul,  a  sick  man  looking  to  God 
for  health,  asks  for  a  boon  which  requires  only 
the  condition  of  his  own  faith  and  the  action  of 
God's  spirit  upon  his  own  personality.  Again, 
to  give  a  man  power  to  make  or  find  sufficient 
for  his  daily  material  need  only  requires  the 
adjustment  of  a  man's  wisdom  and  powers  to  his 
environment.  So  far,  then,  as  God  can  act  upon 
a  man's  body  and  will  and  environment  directly 
through  man's  spirit,  Jesus  taught  that  he  would 
naturally  fulfil  man's  needs  with  that  certainty  and 
promptitude  which  is  seen  in  all  natural  sequence. 
Prayer  in  these  matters  ought,  according  to  his 
teaching,  to  have  no  element  of  resignation,  for 


62       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

here  resignation  would  be  distrust  of  God's  kind- 
ness. As  to  certain  other  contingent  goods, 
matters  of  the  hour,  about  which  man,  however 
great  his  sense  of  need,  could  not  know  that  God 
would  bestow  them,  Jesus  taught  that  the  Father's 
will  was  certain  but  the  time  of  its  accomplishment 
unknown.  To  all  temporary  suffering  occasioned 
by  delay  there  must  be  resignation.  In  these 
cases  we  find  on  examination  that  the  event  is  a 
result,  not  only  of  God's  action  on  man's  in- 
dividual affairs  through  the  personal  power  of 
one  or  more  faithful  souls,  but  of  God's  action  on 
various  classes  of  men  and  public  affairs,  where 
there  is  no  unanimous  human  will.  There  is 
nothing  mysterious  in  this  distinction,  nor  is  there 
any  mystery  in  the  fact  that  while  a  power  of 
choice,  however  limited,  is  granted  to  humanity, 
any  action  of  God  upon  large  bodies  of  men  and 
different  classes  of  men  must  be  a  matter  of  time, 
pending  the  acquiescence  and  faith  of  multitudes. 
In  such  action  the  processes  are  so  complex  that 
no  human  vision  could  possibly  calculate  and 
foresee  results.  We  may  take,  as  example,  the 
cessation  of  a  national  persecution.  Will  not 
God  avenge  his  own  elect  ?  He  will,  and  that 
as  quickly  as  his  forbearance  with  the  freedom 
of  the  wicked  will  allow.  That  is  the  gist  of  our 
Lord's  teaching  concerning  those  cases  where  the 
prosperity  of  the  faithful  depends  upon  the 
behaviour  of  communities  and  nations.  There  is 
here  no  more  element  of  uncertainty  as  to  God's 
intention  toward  man  than  in  other  cases;  it 
presents   him    as    never   withholding   of  his   own 


ch.  vi   THE    DOCTRINE    OF    PRAYER       63 

accord,  never  considering  that  it  is  better  for  the 
suppliant   to   withhold    a   good   thing,    as    always 
willing  to  grant  a  reasonable  prayer  and  accom- 
plishing it  as   quickly   as   a   uniform   dependence 
upon    the    necessary    condition    in    mankind   will 
allow.     The  perfection  of  the  Father  is  to  exercise 
his  love  for  the  unjust  as  certainly  as  for  the  just, 
to    patiently    wait    upon    the    perversity    of    the 
ungodly   until  through,   it  may   be,   the  suffering 
of  the  godly  and  whatever  other  spiritual  means 
may  be   brought  to   bear  upon  their  spirits,   the 
conditions  of  earthly  things  can,  in  the  course  of 
nature,   be   ordered   to   the   answering  of  prayer. 
The  good  of  those  who  pray  could  not  be  accom- 
plished at  the  expense  of  those  who  do  not  pray  — 
God  could  not  be  God   and  act  thus  —  but  the 
accomplishment  of  God's  unvarying  favour  toward 
all  is  contingent  upon  human  faith;    and  when  its 
accomplishment  depends,  as  it  does  depend  in  all 
social  things,  upon  the  increase  of  faith  in  whole 
classes  of  men,  it  is  divine  prescience  alone  that 
can    foresee    the    time    that    will    be    required. 
Resignation  as  to  the  time  of  fulfilment  is  required 
in  the  hearts  of  those  who  pray  for  such  needful 
things  as  depend  upon  the  action  of  society,  but 
not  because  God  ever  withholds  the  boon.     The 
conception  of  God   as  torturing  his  children  for 
their  better  discipline  is  not  part  of  the  doctrine  of 
Jesus. 

Where  in  the  four  Gospels  is  there  any  teaching 
that  disappointment  in  prayer  is  God's  direct  will 
for  any  man,  either  in  the  sense  of  punishment  or 
of    that    prolonged    discipline    which    figures    so 


64       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

largely  in  devotional  literature  ?  Those  who 
enter  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth  are  told  to 
pray  daily  that  God's  will  be  done,  in  perfect  faith 
that  God  wills  for  earth  what  is  characteristic  of 
heaven.  Jesus  never  minimises  the  element  of 
petition  in  prayer;  he  calls  upon  his  followers  to 
pray,  not  only  that  their  needs  may  be  met,  but  that 
their  desires  may  be  realised,  knowing  certainly 
that  all  good  will  come  the  sooner  and  the  better 
for  their  asking;  but  when  the  petition  passes 
beyond  the  health  of  the  individual,  soul  and  body, 
no  man  can  foresee  how  long  it  will  be  ere  the  self- 
government  of  the  social  order  will  render  the 
fulfilment  of  the  desire  possible. 

The  next  great  truth  that  is  emphasised  in 
this  record  of  marvels  is  that  while  God  will  always 
restore  to  man  the  power  and  opportunity  of  self- 
government,  he  will  never  use  force.  We  learn 
from  the  actions  of  Jesus  that  there  is  one  thing 
God  will  never  do,  even  in  answer  to  prayer  —  he 
will  never  coerce  the  wills  of  men. 

The  ordinary  Christian  explanation  of  as  much 
of  the  problem  of  evil  as  we  can  reason  about, 
is  that,  for  the  sake  of  evolving  creatures  who 
should  have  personality  at  once  free  and  good, 
God  risks  and  endures  all  the  evil  that  is  intro- 
duced into  the  universe  by  the  gift  of  that  power 
of  choice  necessary  to  personality  and  to  goodness. 
Accepting  this,  the  Christian  explanation  of  the 
moral  purpose  for  which  evil  is  allowed  to  exist,  it 
follows  that  such  a  modicum  of  free  will  as  man 
possesses  is  the  most  valuable  thing,  because  the 
most    costly.     God    must    value    man's    freedom 


ch.vi     THE    DOCTRINE    OF    PRAYER     65 

above  all  things,  because  without  freedom  his 
goodness  would  have  no  higher  attribute  than  the 
goodness  of  a  stone  or  a  tree  or  a  sheep.  Just 
as  inanimate  rightness  is  meaningless  compared 
with  the  rightness  of  anything  that  possesses  vital 
force,  so  the  rightness  of  man  with  some  power  of 
initiative  must  be  an  aim  of  God's  system  of 
evolution  higher  than  any  other  terrestrial  aim. 
The  power  to  choose  between  good  and  evil  is  the 
means  of  man's  salvation,  and  the  only  means  of 
his  salvation.  In  so  far  as  he  is  coerced  he  is  not 
being  saved.  Salvation  cannot  consist  in  carrying 
out  God's  will  —  all  inanimate  things  carry  out 
God's  will  —  but  in  doing  this  by  choice.  (We 
mean  here  by  "salvation"  free  righteousness  and 
nothing  more.)  We  have  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  it  is  a  worse  thing  for  man  freely  to  choose 
evil  than  to  have  no  power  of  choice.  Sin,  on  the 
Christian  hypothesis,  proves  the  possibility  of  good 
in  the  sinner.  Of  the  possibilities  of  the  ultimate 
salvationof  amanwho  persists  in  sin  in  this  world  we 
know  nothing,  but  we  can  clearly  perceive  that  in  the 
loss  of  free  will  there  is  no  possibility  of  salvation. 

Thus  we  must  perceive  that  the  one  thing  God 
will  not  do  in  answer  to  prayer  is  to  encroach  on 
the  limited  domain  in  which  he  has  left  man  free. 
The  value  of  every  man's  freedom  may  not  appear 
to  us  an  adequate  explanation  of  sin  and  suffering, 
but  it  is  the  only  explanation  that  we  have  any 
conception  of,  and  it  is  folly  to  hold  it  in  any 
sense  an  explanation  and  not  perceive  the  greatness 
and  the  fineness  of  its  issues. 

Where  our  first  human  records  begin  we  find 


66       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

man  with  that  same  belief  in  the  advantage  of 
coercing  his  fellows  that  seems  to  possess  the  whole 
animal  world.  When  an  animal,  or  a  herd  of 
animals,  disapprove  any  action  of  their  fellows, 
their  efforts  at  coercion  are  prompt  and  violent; 
and  so  it  is  in  human  history.  It  is  only  where 
we  find  man  beginning  to  reason  from  the  failure 
of  high-handed  violence  that  persuasion  may  be 
temporarily  necessary  that  he  begins  to  use  the 
gentler  method.  From  its  success  we  find  him 
reasoning  that  it  may  occasionally  be  the  more 
efficacious  course.  Up  all  the  long,  long  roads 
by  which  our  race  has  travelled  from  its  beginnings 
to  modern  civilisation,  we  see  a  slow  and  gradual 
increase  in  the  belief  in  gentler  methods  between 
rulers  and  their  subjects,  victorious  nations  and 
those  they  have  conquered,  between  judges  and 
criminals,  between  parents  and  children.  Although 
this  line  of  progress  is  so  long,  its  advance  so 
meandering,  so  slow,  it  leaves  the  reflective  mind 
in  no  doubt  as  to  the  main  direction  in  which  it 
moves,  although  to  realise  how  little  we  have 
advanced  on  the  first  human  raiders,  or  the 
trampling  herds  that  crashed  through  forests  that 
fell  before  man  rose,  we  have  but  to  feel  the  pulse 
of  Christendom  when  war  is  bruited,  and  listen 
to  the  voice  of  thousands  of  so-called  Christians 
fanning  the  flame  of  the  martial  spirit. 

Corresponding  with  this  slow  advance,  we  find 
in  all  progressive  religion  the  higher  strains  of 
inspired  poetry  attributing  more  and  more  the 
character  of  gentleness  to  God.  "Thy  gentleness 
hath   made   me   great,"   was   the   epitome   of  the 


ch.  vi     THE    DOCTRINE   OF    PRAYER     67 

highest  religious  experience  before  Christ  came; 
and  when  he  taught  that  he  himself  was  the 
revelation  of  the  divine  will  dealing  with  man, 
when  he  told  us  that  God  was  a  Father,  and 
refused  even  in  his  moments  of  highest  indigna- 
tion, or  in  his  hour  of  dire  necessity,  to  use  power, 
he  gave  the  lie  to  all  that  large  religious  mistake 
by  which  man  in  all  time  has  attributed  his  own 
violence  -—  the  violence  of  weakness,  his  own  mis- 
taken notions  of  justice  —  the  justice  of  oppression, 
to  the  god  he  worshipped.  "The  prince  of 
this  world,"  "the  kingdoms  of  this  world,"  are 
our  Lord's  synonyms  for  this  spirit.  As  warfare 
has  been  necessary  for  the  evolution  of  the  world, 
we  can  only  suppose  that  warfare  must  be  necessary 
for  the  salvation  of  mankind  until  man  will  listen 
to  the  counsels  of  love  and  peace,  just  as  the  sins 
of  an  individual  must  be  necessary  for  his  salvation 
until  he  will  choose  the  right,  because  in  both 
cases  only  the  highest  result  could  be  worth  so 
terrible  a  price. 

But  if  there  is  any  growth  in  man's  knowledge, 
if  there  is  any  progress  in  his  character,  if  he  has 
evolved  any  real  wisdom  out  of  his  hours  of 
reflection,  if  the  Spirit  of  God  has  guided  him, 
speaking  with  increasing  clearness  in  the  inner 
temple  of  his  soul,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  the 
doctrine  of  our  Lord's  divinity,  man  has  learned 
that  by  gentleness,  and  only  by  gentleness,  man 
can  be  made  great. 

This  is  the  light  which  struggled  in  darkness 
from  the  beginning,  which  in  our  Lord's  time 
was   not  comprehended   by  the   darkness,   nor  is 


68       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

yet;  although  we  are  all  dimly  aware  that  it  is 
only  to  those  who  receive  him  on  this  understand- 
ing that  he  gives  power  to  become  sons  of  God. 

But  how  many  prayers  of  the  pious  are  still 
directed  to  the  hope  of  the  divine  coercion  over 
human  action  !  The  saints  have  asked  that  they 
themselves  may  be  coerced  into  goodness,  and 
that  their  persecutors  may  be  coerced  into  justice 
and  mercy.  They  seem  to  think  it  most  inexplic- 
able that  our  Lord  will  not  remake  men  so  that 
they  will  not  sin.  If  when  on  earth  he  gave  men 
health,  if  he  cast  out  their  unclean  spirits,  if  he 
fed  them  and  gave  wine  for  their  feasts,  why  did 
he  not  do  the  one  thing  needful,  and  give  them 
hearts  that  would  not  sin  and  minds  that  would 
not  err  ?  It  is  these  latter  boons  that  we  in  our 
folly  desire  of  his  power,  and  we  do  not  see  that 
just  these  would  deprive  us  of  the  salvation  he 
came  to  give. 

These  baffled  expectations  have  left  their  legacy 
of  negative  conclusions  also;  for  if  God,  when 
besieged  by  prayer,  will  not  stay  the  hand  of  the 
persecutor  until,  by  God's  long-suffering,  the  will 
of  the  persecutor  is  altered;  if  God  will  not  check 
high-handed  oppression  of  class  over  class,  or 
prevent  the  economic  crimes  that  mean  the  suffer- 
ing of  thousands,  and,  what  is  more,  if  he  will 
not  coerce  his  votaries  into  the  goodness  they  so 
passionately  desire  and  do  not  feel  able  to  achieve, 
then  disappointed  suppliants  think  it  follows  that 
the  age  of  beneficent  marvels  is  passed,  that  we 
must  find  some  other  explanation  of  our  Lord's 
promises  to  prayer  than  a  literal  one,  and  regard 


ch.  vi     THE    DOCTRINE    OF    PRAYER     69 

his   benevolent   marvels   as   local   and   temporary. 
The  Church,  having  discovered  that  obedience,  the 
patient   training  of  himself  to   obedience,   is   the 
condition    upon    which    the    grace    of  virtue    and 
insight  into  divine  wisdom   is   granted   to   a   man, 
has    gone    on    to    teach    that    this    is    the    only 
condition   on   which   all   prayer  will   be   granted, 
and    also    that    all    prayer    for    material    benefits 
must   be   made   only   in   a   spirit   resigned   to   its 
rejection.     This  was   not  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
The  graces  of  the  spiritual  life  do  depend,  because 
they  must,  upon  man's  free  obedience  to  the  whole 
law   of  love:     all   such   personal   benefits    as    are 
material  and  merely  mundane,  but  will  help  him 
toward   that   obedience,  are   freely  offered  to  the 
prayer,  not  of  resignation,  but  of  assurance.     We 
cannot  doubt  that  it  was  to  put  man  in  the  most 
favourable  position  for  receiving  spiritual  blessings 
by  making  his  power  of  choice  more  untrammelled, 
as  well  as  to  persuade  him  that  God  was  good  — 
so  good  that  obedience  to  him  was  the  greatest 
happiness  —  that  our  Lord's  ministry  was   char- 
acterised from  beginning  to  end  by  the  free  gift 
of  health  and  self-control  and  lavish  means  of  a 
simple  life;  faith  in  God's  good  will,  the  assurance 
of  faith,   being  the  only  condition.     Although  in 
this  day  we  may  have  a  more  general  spiritual 
insight,  the  corporate  mind  of  that  day  was  more 
prone  to  the  reception  of  the  physical  gifts  Jesus 
gave,  so  that  this  perfect  assurance  of  faith  was 
possible    to    many.     We    need    to    recover    this 
corporate  faith  in  the  physical  gifts  of  God. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    PLACE    OF    THE    KINGDOM    IN    THE    STRUGGLE 
TO    SURVIVE 

The  very  nature  of  the  struggle  for  survival 
through  long  world-ages  emphasises  in  every  living 
creature  the  characteristics  of  greed  and  hatred. 
It  is,  and  always  has  been,  as  the  individual,  brute 
or  man,  fights,  and  as  he  gets,  that  he  survives. 
It  is  true  that  the  principle  of  love  has  always 
been  concomitantly  developed;  for  the  individual 
as  a  unit  cannot  survive  long  except  in  the  larger 
unit  of  family,  tribe,  and  nation,  and  for  the  forma- 
tion of  these  larger  units  love  is  necessary.  But 
the  unit  once  formed,  whether  large  or  small, 
survives,  as  compared  with  like  units,  by  its 
capacity  for  greed  and  hatred,  so  that  these 
qualities  continue  to  be  developed  by  exercise. 
The  aim  of  these  combatants  is  always  to  claim 
their  rights  or,  as  we  say,  justice.  Fighting  men 
never  agree  with  their  opponents  in  the  applica- 
tion of  these  terms. 

Jesus  came  to  create  a  universal  unit  —  man- 
kind at  one,  therefore  at  one  with  God.  This  was 
his  "kingdom  of  heaven";    and  he  perceived  that 

70 


cH.vii  THE  PLACE  OF  THE  KINGDOM  71 

for  the  formation  and  coherence  of  such  a  universal 
unit  the  faculties  of  love  must  be  developed  at 
the  expense  of  hate  and  greed,  to  the  atrophy  of 
hate  and  greed,  in  the  whole  race.  We  can  well 
imagine  that  this  is  man's  necessary  development 
if  he  is  not  to  pass,  as  all  other  forms  of  life  have 
passed,  destroyed  ultimately  by  his  own  fighting 
qualities;  for  if  a  world-empire,  or  a  church, 
should  become  universal  by  these  latter  means 
they  must,  grown  lusty  by  exercise,  be  turned 
within  as  soon  as  there  is  no  scope  for  them  with- 
out —  for  character  is  formed  by  action  and  trans- 
mitted to  children's  children.  The  doctrine  of 
Jesus  was  clear,  that  man  would  only  be  at  one 
with  God  as  he  was  at  one  with  all  his  fellows. 
He  taught  that  there  was  no  atonement  between 
God  and  man  without  perfect  atonement  between 
man  and  man.  This  was  a  conception  of  trans- 
cendent genius. 

The  question  which  Jesus  must  have  asked  of 
the  light  within  him  was,  how  this  conception 
could  be  realised,  how  love  could  triumph  over 
hatred  and  greed  —  love,  with  its  desire  to  give 
rather  than  to  get,  and  to  cast  down  every  barrier 
by  forgiveness  ? 

Was  it  possible  so  to  manifest  to  the  world 
the  glorious  joy  of  perfect  love  that  hatred  and 
covetousness  would  pass  before  its  light  as  dark- 
ness before  the  sun  ? 

The  first  expression  of  his  ministry  was  the 
lavish  gift  of  all  that  he  had  to  give,  together 
with  the  ascription  of  perfect  love  to  God  and 
the  description  of  what  would  be  perfect  love  in 


72       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 


BOOK    I 


man.  God  was  good  to  the  unthankful  and  the 
evil,  and  man  must  be  good  to  his  enemy.  No 
eye  but  his  own  could  see  the  glory  of  it.  They 
were  all  stumbling  and  carping,  like  fretful 
children.  "Lord,  how  oft  shall  my  brother  sin 
against  me  and  I  forgive  him?"  was  the  highest 
reception  of  his  news;  and  the  lowest,  "He  casts 
out  devils  by  the  prince  of  the  devils."  In  what 
way  could  they  learn  what  this  conception  of 
universal  love  was  ?  He  talked  about  the  love 
of  God,  free  and  tender  as  a  father's  to  a  child, 
and  found  that  the  mind  of  the  Church  of  his  day 
was  full  of  the  observance  of  the  sabbath  and 
ablutions  and  tithings.  He  talked  to  them  about 
love  of  man  to  man,  so  great  that  it  could  resent 
no  injury,  so  sensitive  that  it  could  do  no  harm, 
and  his  own  disciples  responded  with  rivalries  as 
to  place  and  power. 

Jesus  regarded  meekness  under  wrong  as  the 
highest  exercise  of  love  toward  a  blind  and  per- 
verse people,  and  advanced  this  as  the  most 
undeniable  argument  for  the  power  of  love,  an 
argument  which  must  arrest  their  dark  minds 
and  enter  their  darkened  hearts.  To  whom  would 
they  listen  ?  Nominally,  and  to  a  certain  degree 
in  truth,  they  listened  to  their  dead  prophets,  who 
had  lifted  up  their  voices  and  told  the  truth  of 
God  as  they  saw  it,  to  a  gainsaying  people.  To 
the  profound  insight  of  Jesus,  gainsaying,  contra- 
diction, perversity,  and  faithlessness  in  those  to 
whom  the  message  came  was  the  essence  of  per- 
secution. It  gave  pain  to  the  heart  of  God's 
messenger  incomparably  greater  than  any  physical 


ch.  vii  THE  PLACE  OF  THE  KINGDOM   73 

pain.  He  always  speaks  of  the  prophets  as  suffer- 
ing persecution,  although  many  of  them  were  not 
the  victims  of  tyranny.  And  when  had  they 
been  listened  to  ?  Only  when  the  patriotic  motive 
of  their  preaching  had  been  proved  by  their 
suffering  of  persecution.  Here  we  come  on  the 
place  of  suffering  in  the  scheme  of  Jesus.  No 
one  —  materialistic  Sadducee,  law-worshipping 
Pharisee,  publican  or  sinner  —  no  one  now  doubted 
the  inspiration  or  altruism  of  these  dead  prophets. 
They  had  endured  the  contradiction  of  sinners; 
they  had  been  disbelieved  by  the  perverse  genera- 
tion whom  they  would  have  saved;  and  the  moral 
result  upon  a  nation  of  persecutors  was  reverence 
for  their  character  and  word.  Here,  then,  in  the 
loving  endurance  of  persecution,  was  the  way  that 
every  one  who  would  advance  the  kingdom  must 
pass,  until  the  kingdom  be  universal.  "Blessed 
are  ye  when  men  shall  persecute  you.  Rejoice 
and  be  exceeding  glad,  for  so  persecuted  they  the 
prophets."  And  therefore  he  said,  "It  must 
needs  be  that  I  suffer."  This  does  not  prove  that 
there  is  anything  divine  in  suffering;  it  proves 
that  love  is  divine;  and  only  by  suffering  can 
love  deal  with  men  who  are  animated  by  hatred 
and  tenacious  of  possession  and  power.  The 
remedial  power  of  suffering  endured  willingly 
because  of  the  love  borne  to  him  who  commits 
the  injury  is  obvious;  but  it  is  the  man  who 
inflicts  suffering  that  is  saved  by  it,  not  he  who 
endures  it.  To  endure  willingly  is  the  one  proof 
of  love  which  even  hatred  cannot  ignore.  The 
shepherd  who  gives  his  life  for  the  sheep  is  good; 


74       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book, 

none  can  dispute  his  goodness.  The  man  who 
gives  his  life  for  his  friends  loves  them  so  that  all 
men  say  that  no  love  could  be  greater.  It  was 
the  antiseptic  efficacy,  the  redemptive  force,  of 
this  proof  of  love  to  God  and  man,  that  caused 
Jesus  to  put  so  high  a  value  upon  it.  It  was  the 
force  of  love  and  courage  and  benevolence  involved 
in  meekness,  and  not  mere  meekness,  that  he 
valued.  There  are  few  things  more  foreign  to 
the  ideal  of  Jesus  than  resignation  under  injury 
when  inspired  by  any  other  motive  than  love  to  him 
who  injures.  The  mother,  the  wife,  who  endures 
the  cruelty  of  son  or  husband  for  love's  sake, 
shielding  by  patience,  winning  by  a  cheerful  meek- 
ness, has  every  man's  reverence.  But  the  same 
meekness  exercised  in  order  to  obtain  mere  peace, 
or  some  form  of  favour,  is  universally  despised. 
When  injury  is  accepted  patiently  because  he  who 
injures  is  infinitely  dear,  a  god-like  peace  is  pro- 
duced; to  accept  it  for  any  other  reason  is  to  cry, 
" Peace,  peace"  when  there  is  no  peace.  This 
affords  a  possible  explanation  of  the  text  about 
the  two  swords.  When  Jesus  was  leaving  his 
disciples,  depriving  them  for  the  hour  of  his 
leadership  —  a  leading  of  which  universal  love  was 
the  motive  —  when  he  knew  that  some  little  time 
must  elapse  before  they  could  so  enter  into  the 
meaning  of  his  suffering,  that  his  peace  would  be 
theirs,  and  the  spirit  of  his  almighty  love  would 
inspire  them,  he  told  them  to  provide  themselves 
with  swords.  He  also  said,  "He  that  takes  the 
sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword,"  as  though  he 
had  said,   Better  the  sword  of  self-defence,  even 


ch.vii  THE  PLACE  OF  THE  KINGDOM   75 

though  death  be  the  issue,  than  for  a  man  to  allow 
himself  to  be  struck  from  any  other  motive  than 
that  of  love.  Yet  the  spirit  of  the  sword  is  dis- 
loyal to  the  spirit  of  Jesus;  after  Peter's  brave  but 
angry  sword-thrust  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane 
he  very  quickly  denied  his  Lord. 

There  is  nothing  more  significant  of  our  need 
of  Christian  reformation  than  the  fact  that  the  only 
words  we  have  to  express  the  most  prominent  ideas 
of  Jesus  —  love,  meekness  —  are  so  degraded  that 
many  of  us  have  no  verbal  translation  for  these 
ideas  of  his.  To  the  Jew  the  lion-hearted  Moses 
was  the  great  example  of  meekness.  Jesus  had  no 
use  for  men  without  a  dominant  purpose.  It  is 
only  to  such  men  that  the  kingdom  is  open,  and 
only  for  such  that  its  laws  are  operative.  It  is 
worth  noting  that  on  the  few  occasions  where  Jesus 
is  recorded  to  have  used  the  word  "meek"  it  is  in 
close  connection  with  the  idea  of  personal  dominion 
—  "The  meek  shall  inherit  the  earth"  1  (an 
almost  literal  transcription  of  Psalm  xxxvii.  11); 
again,  "All  things  are  delivered  unto  me  of  my 
Father.  .  .  .  Come  unto  me  ...  for  I  am  meek 
and  lowly  of  heart";2  lastly,  where  Jesus  is  re- 
ported as  applying  the  prophecy  of  Zechariah  to 
himself,  "  Behold,  thy  king  cometh  unto  thee 
meek."  3  While  we  still  have  Christian  teachers 
who  use  the  word  "love"  as  if  it  denoted  either  a 
mawkish  sentiment  or  an  unreasoning  passion,  we 
may  well  be  appalled  as  we  realise  that  such  a  use 
proves  that  a  large  body  of  our  people  have  never 
even  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  Christian  ideal. 

1  St.  Matt.  v.  5.       2  St.  Matt.  xi.  27-29.       3  St.  Matt.  xxi.  5. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SALVATION    BY   JOY 

The  highest  theory  that  the  world's  rarest  and 
best  piety  had  arrived  at  before  Christ  came  was 
the  idea  of  salvation  by  suffering.  The  end  was 
perfection;  the  way  was  pain.  It  is  true  that  the 
vision  of  the  mystic  had  given  glimpses  of  a  higher 
way,  but  this  phase  of  insight  was  almost  inarticu- 
late. The  seers  themselves  could  not  assimilate  it 
to  the  rest  of  their  belief;  it  had  given  birth  to 
no  creed,  either  in  philosophy  or  religion.  "As 
far  as  the  east  is  from  the  west  so  far  hast  thou 
removed  our  transgressions  from  us"  is  the  song 
of  a  soul  under  the  influence  of  this  rare  vision; 
and  in  its  light  he  hears  the  divine  answer,  "As 
the  heavens  are  high  above  the  earth,  so  are  my 
ways  higher  than  your  ways,  saith  the  Lord." 
Man's  way  was  the  way  of  the  moralist,  therefore 
the  isolated  rays  of  the  mystic  vision  had  to  be  put 
under  the  horn  lantern  of  a  lower  religious  theory. 
Whatever  the  full  meaning  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  it  is  certain  that  just  so  far  as  it  was  above 
the  thought  of  his  time,  and  so  far  as  it  was  to  be 
the  light  of  all  future  generations,  just  so  far  it 

76 


chap,  viii       SALVATION    BY   JOY  jj 

must  have  been  partially  interpreted  and  darkened 
by  what  seemed  necessary  to  the  world  of  his  day. 

How  far  he  taught  that  the  salvation  of  the 
world  must  come  by  suffering  is  a  most  vital 
question,  nor  does  it  seem  to  be  difficult  to  answer. 
The  end  he  preached  was  perfection;  but  the  way 
was  joy,  not  pain.  If  it  be  objected  that  joy  as 
we  know  it  is  but  an  incidental  experience  to  him 
who  would  attain  perfection,  it  may  be  replied 
that  so  is  pain.  Yet  pain  had  been  accepted  as  a 
means,  as  a  discipline;  Jesus  substituted  the 
discipline  of  joy.  Further,  for  Jesus  perfection 
was  to  be  realised  in  a  state  of  universal  love.  Its 
exemplar  was  the  God  who  poured  forth  good 
upon  just  and  unjust  alike.  Salvation  was  to  begin 
and  be  accomplished  in  a  kingdom  of  love;  and 
love,  although  the  highest  joy,  involves  costly 
activities  in  the  person  who  loves.  He  gives  with- 
out measure;  he  forgives  without  measure.  So 
far  as  this  means  suffering,  the  salvation  of  the 
world  comes  by  suffering  —  the  suffering  of 
unrequited  love.  Suffering  is  incidental  and 
temporary,  but  joy  is  necessary  to  salvation  and 
to  our  idea  of  perfection. 

Joy  cannot  be  perfect  till  the  whole  world  is 
saved  out  of  its  separatism  into  the  great  at-one- 
ment  of  the  reign  of  universal  love.  There  is 
only  one  chance  of  winning  the  children  of  hate  to 
the  side  of  the  children  of  love  —  it  is  the  vision  of 
hate  in  its  worst  colours  and  love  in  its  best.  This 
vision  is  only  open  to  the  eyes  of  men  when  the 
victim  of  ill-will  suffers  without  resentment  and  in 
entire  charity.     St.   Paul  was  probably  prepared 


78       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

for  his  conversion  by  St.  Stephen's  martyrdom, 
not  because  St.  Stephen  died  for  his  faith,  but 
because  in  dying  he  manifested  love  and  forgive- 
ness for  his  tormentors.  Long  afterward  St. 
Paul,  who  must  have  seen  many  —  not  only 
Christians  but  Jews  and  pagans  —  die  for  their 
faith,  wrote  in  a  passage  of  great  inspiration, 
"Though  I  give  my  body  to  be  burned  and  have 
not  love  it  profiteth  me  nothing."  Nothing ! 
The  kingdom  of  God  gains  nothing  from  any  zeal 
or  any  suffering  which  is  not  offered  out  of  the 
depths  of  love  to  God  and  man. 

The  Christian  must  drink  so  deeply  of  the 
spirit  of  the  Saviour  that  he  will  actually  and 
tenderly  love  his  brothers,  his  neighbours,  and  his 
enemies.  All  men  come  under  one  of  these  heads ; 
there  is  no  relation  of  life  that  is  not  covered  by  one 
of  them.  There  is  no  salvation  recognised  in  the 
Gospels  that  is  not  manifested  by  this  income  and 
output  of  love.  This  love  will  be  more  or  less  re- 
jected, and  the  consequent  neglect  or  ills,  petty  and 
great,  that  arise  from  the  animus  of  persecution 
are  the  only  suffering  which  the  Christian  is 
called  on  to  endure.  Neglect  and  contradiction 
are  inevitable  to  all  men  who  are  saved  by  loving, 
and  are  saving  the  world  by  loving  it;  but  love 
remains  the  highest  joy,  whatever  be  its  suffering. 

Thus  we  see  that  suffering  is  never  to  be  courted 
for  private  ends.  The  individual  can  win  his 
life  only  by  expending  his  love  for  the  sake 
of  the  corporate  life,  and  whatever  renunciation 
Jesus  called  on  a  man  to  make  was  to  be  the 
instrument   of  the   world's    salvation.     "In   your 


chap,  viii       SALVATION    BY    JOY  79 

patience  ye  shall  possess  your  lives "  follows  close 

upon  "Ye  shall  be  hated  of  all  men  for  my  sake." 

Whatever  is  done  for  the  sake  of  the  King,  done 

as  the  King  would  do  it,  is  done  to  advance  the 

kingdom.     Whatever  is  demanded  for  the  sake  of 

the  Saviour  of  the  world  is  demanded  for  the  sake 

of  saving  the  world.     We  need  not  regard  it  as 

a    mysterious    question   whether   suffering   has    a 

redemptive  efficacy;    it  is  a  fact  that  what  love 

suffers    in    its    effort    to    save    has    a    redemptive 

efficacy,  and  there  is  no  other  suffering  which  the 

Redeemer  regarded   as  the  will  of  God.     When 

Jesus  fully  perceived  that  there  was  no  way  of 

meekness  and  love  by  which  he  could  avoid  the 

utmost  cruelty  of  his  persecutors,  no  way  except 

that  of  coercion  by  superior  force,  it  was  then,  and 

only    then,    that    he    spoke    of   suffering    as    the 

Father's  will.     It  was  only  then  that  he  found  a 

difference  between  his  own  desire  and  God's,  and 

resigned  his  own.     The  cup  that  the  Father  gave 

him  was  submission  to  the  malice  of  men.     It  was 

of  that  hour  he  predicted,  "I  will  draw  all  men 

unto  me;"    he  called  it  "the  hour  of  darkness" 

and   "of  the   prince  of  this  world."     The   cross 

was  the  culminating  expression  of  the  suffering  of 

unrequited  love.     It  was  the  symbol  of  the  worst 

evil   that   mankind   could   inflict   upon   man,   the 

extreme  form  of  shame  and  pain;    and  it  was  to 

be  embraced  in  spirit  every  day  because  it  was 

pregnant  with  the  world's  redemption. 

At  the  same  time  the  Christian  does  not  through 
the  pains  of  love  suffer  more  than  other  men,  and 
he  has  love's  joy.    Greater  is  the  inevitable  suffering 


So       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

of  non-Christians,  who  go  on  under  the  law  of  a 
lower  stage  of  human  development  trying  to  save 
themselves  at  the  expense  of  others  by  individual 
or  corporate  gain-getting  and  warfare.  These  do 
not  expend  their  lives  for  others  and  thus  save 
them ;  they  save  their  lives  at  the  expense  of  others 
and  thus  lose  them.  Such  a  life  brings  its  own 
inevitable  loss,  losing  itself  in  the  mere  act  of 
getting  and  fighting,  by  the  gradual  shrinkage  of 
those  powers  of  love  by  which  man  can  enjoy 
either  himself  or  his  fellows  or  God.  The  punish- 
ment or  destruction  or  loss  of  those  men  who 
seek  to  survive  in  some  limited  unit  of  family, 
class,  or  nation,  is  that  they  go  on  exercising  those 
powers  by  which  alone  their  unit  can  rise  in  rela- 
tion to  other  units.  They  are  not  to  be  pun- 
ished—  they  are  punishing  themselves;  they  are 
not  to  be  cast  out  —  they  are  outcast.  This  was 
certainly  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  —  that  to  pass  from 
the  restricted  unit,  which  flourished  temporarily  by 
hating  and  getting,  to  the  universal  union  of  God 
and  mankind,  which  flourishes  now  and  eternally 
only  by  loving  and  giving,  was  to  pass  from  death 
unto  life.  To  say  this  is  to  say  that  light  came 
by  the  transcendent  insight  of  Jesus.  In  order  to 
see  that  light  clearly  we  need  to  untwist  the  many 
strands  of  our  conventional  thought. 

Let  us  take  the  various  reasons  why  love  must 
be  unrequited  in  the  world. 

Love  is  possessed  by  an  unquenchable  thirst  for 
perfection  in  her  object.  A  man,  if  he  be  tenderly 
attached  to  father,  son,  brother,  or  friend,  cannot 
allow  in  him  any  course  of  conduct  inferior  to  the 


chap,  viii        SALVATION    BY    JOY  81 

best  without  endeavouring  to  change  his  course  by 
every  means  that  promises  success.  Even  when 
love  is  pure  and  strong,  and  uses  only  good  means, 
the  yoke  of  love  will  seem  irksome  to  the  object 
who  prefers  an  inferior  course  of  action,  and  con- 
sequently something  less  than  love  in  his  friend. 
Natural  affection,  sympathy,  appreciation,  con- 
fidence, delicacy  of  touch  —  these  are  the  signs  of 
love  in  its  outflow,  but  they  may  exist  without 
love.  These  signs  of  love  without  the  core  or 
heart  of  love's  intensity  in  them  make  less  de- 
mand, and  they  are  therefore  often  preferred  by 
the  indifferent,  by  whom  love  is  seen  as  unlovely, 
spurned,  and  put  to  shame.  There  is  always 
something  akin  to  shame  in  the  suffering  of  un- 
requited love.  This  is  what  the  Christian  must 
suffer  from  the  indifferent. 

It  is  in  her  natural  outflow  of  affection, 
sympathy,  faith,  and  a  sensitive  taste,  that  love 
suffers;  therefore  love  that  is  weak  out  of 
cowardice  puts  on  foreign  qualities,  an  armour  not 
her  own  —  hardness,  stupidity,  distrust,  pride,  and 
vulgarity.  These  have  no  affinity  with  love,  but 
weak  love  hides  behind  them.  When  strong  love, 
exercising  its  own  qualities,  comes  in  contact  with 
weak  love,  protecting  herself  by  weak  devices,  the 
contest  between  them  is  very  grave.  The  weakest 
love  has  a  tenacity  and  intensity  which  indifference 
can  never  have.  It  delights  in,  but  fears,  the 
methods  that  strong  love  must  use.  Thus  we  get 
the  conflict  between  one  right  and  another,  and 
we  have  the  borderland  where  jarring  missionary 
effort  almost  merges  itself  into  petty  persecution. 


82       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS     book  i 

Here,  again,  the  strong  love  must  suffer  most. 
When,  for  example,  the  relatives  of  Jesus  thought 
that  he  was  beside  himself  and  desired  to  withdraw 
him  from  publicity,  their  motive,  no  doubt,  was 
love.  Love  was  St.  Peter's  motive  when  he  spoke 
the  remonstrance  against  the  forecast  of  the  cross. 
Love  may  have  been  Martha's  motive  when  she 
would  have  called  her  sister  from  the  feet  of  Jesus. 
The  divergence  of  method  between  love  weak  and 
fearful  and  love  strong  and  brave  is  enough  to 
cause  the  endless  division  which  our  Lord  foretells 
where  concord  ought  to  reign  —  father  against  son, 
mother  against  daughter,  etc. ;  and  in  this  there  is 
no  working  of  ill-will  or  the  motive  of  positive 
hate.  Here,  again,  the  more  Christ-like  the  love, 
the  more  it  is  repulsed  and  hampered;  and  this  is 
again  an  aspect  of  the  Christian's  cross. 

But  the  worst  ill-usage  of  love  comes  neither 
from  indifference  nor  from  love's  own  weakness,  but 
from  the  outflow  of  the  religious  man's  evil  will, 
and  that  cruelty  in  him  that  arises  from  hatred. 
Impelled  either  by  some  evil  power  outside  that 
makes  for  unrighteousness,  or  by  the  brain  ten- 
dencies which  he  inherits  from  the  long  ages  when 
he  subsisted  by  robbery  and  violence,  religious 
man  has  ever  felt  it  right  to  interpret  God's  love 
by  his  own  harshness.  Thus  he  comes  to  think 
he  does  God  service  by  despising  or  bullying  or 
slaying  his  religious  opponents.  We  have  a  legion 
of  conventional  Christian  sophistries  which  insist 
upon  calling  everything  which  is  not  love  by  that 
sacred  name,  and  speak  of  universal  love  in  terms 
of  opprobrium. 


chap,  viii       SALVATION    BY    JOY  83 

It  is   unlikely  that  such   confusion  of  thought 
concerning  Christian  love  could  have  been  arrived 
at  had  it  not  been  for  the  ferocity  with  which  the 
Almighty    was    credited    in    attitude    and    action 
toward  non-Christians.     The  ultimate  fate  of  the 
non-Christian  was   painted   by  the  early  Church 
as   very   black   indeed.     This   was   only    natural. 
For  many  centuries  religion,   both  of  Aryan  and 
Semitic  source,  had  dealt  with  tribal  and  national 
deities  whose  attitude  toward  the  enemies  of  their 
people    was    vindictive.      All    literature    was  full 
of  their   triumphant  cruelties.       As  soon  as  the 
Christian   Church   had   visible   demarcation   such 
hereditary    ideas    fell    into    line    with    Christian 
thought,  especially  when  persecution  presented  a 
sore  temptation  to  reciprocal  vindictive  treatment. 
The    words    in    the    Gospels    which    adumbrated 
undefined   notions   concerning   the   region   of  de- 
parted souls  were  interpreted  with  ignorant  literal- 
ness.     When     such     a    vast     difference     between 
the  immortal  condition  of  the  Christian  and  the 
non-Christian  (or  more  especially  the  pervert  or 
excommunicated     person)     had     been     definitely 
established  in  common  thought,  it  was  necessary 
to  common  sense  to  believe  that  all  well-disposed 
persons  were  Christians.     If  a  man  had  a  brother 
or  friend,  or  even  an  enemy,  who  had  done  nothing 
particularly  heinous,   nor   aroused   the  ire  of  ec- 
clesiastics, it  was  uncomfortable  and  unintelligent 
to  suppose  that  God  would   put  him  to  eternal 
torture.     The    result   of   this    was,    not    a    larger 
charity,  but  to  degrade  "Christian  love"  by  mak- 
ing it  cover  whatever  attitude  of  mind   average 


84       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

Christian  people  evinced.  It  was  well  known  that 
Christian  love  was  a  necessary  attribute  of  the 
Christian.  This  knowledge  was  an  abiding  testi- 
mony to  the  impression  Jesus  had  made.  Even 
when  the  flame  of  this  love  died  down  and  flickered 
in  the  socket,  when  the  smoke  and  stench  of  every 
other  sentiment  went  up  from  the  Church,  they 
must  all  be  called  love.  The  inquisitor  must  be 
thought  to  love  his  victim;  the  crusader  must  be 
held  to  have  charity  for  the  man  he  so  wantonly 
slew;  and  every  respectable  form  of  crime  must 
be  held  to  be  compatible  with  Christian  love. 

We  have,  too,  the  very  confusing  fact  that 
these  travesties  of  truth  are  not  wholly  untrue. 
So  near  do  hatred  and  love  lie  together  in  the 
depth  of  our  life  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
distinguish  the  activities  of  the  one  from  those  of 
the  other  by  any  merely  moral  test.  Nor  is  it 
possible  for  moralising  man,  calling  both  moral, 
to  fail  to  attribute  both  to  God.  That  is  why 
the  example  that  Jesus  set  of  absolute  love  in  very 
life  and  deed  is  so  needful.  It  is  by  neglect  of 
this  guide  that  confusion  has  come  about.  In  our 
hearts  we  have  what  appears  to  be  a  common 
source  of  missionary  spirit  and  persecuting  zeal, 
bitter  waters  and  sweet  coming,  as  it  were,  from 
the  same  fountain.  But  there  is  nothing  of  which 
Jesus  seems  more  sure  than  of  his  principle, 
expressed  in  various  ways,  that  when  the  fruit  is 
bad  the  root  is  bad;  that  good,  so  mixed  with 
evil  in  conduct,  is  separate  from  evil  in  the  will. 

Cruelty  can  never  be  the  fruit  of  love.  If  we 
let  go  this  principle  of  Jesus,  that  the  good  will 


chap,  viii       SALVATION    BY   JOY  85 

brings  forth  only  good,  we  are  in  a  labyrinth  that 
none  may  thread,  for  persecution  always  derives  its 
greatest  strength  from  a  sense  of  right.  The 
persecutor  not  only  believes  that  the  man  he 
persecutes  is  wrong,  but  wrong  in  such  a  way  that 
it  will  be  for  his  benefit  to  be  annoyed  or  grieved, 
if  only  it  makes  him  change  his  course.  "Whoso- 
ever killeth  you  will  think  that  he  doeth  God 
service"  states  the  very  raison  d'etre  of  religious 
warfare.  It  may  be  truly  said  that  no  frivolous  man 
is  a  persecutor,  and  that  there  does  not  live  on  the 
earth  the  conscientious  man  who  would  not,  under 
certain  circumstances,  be  strongly  tempted  to 
persecute. 

Although,  in  a  certain  superficial  modern  view, 
persecution  has  come  to  signify  something  so  ill- 
judged  that  it  is  supposed  no  reasonable  person 
could  have  recourse  to  it,  we  shall  always  have  the 
persecutor  until  the  kingdom  of  love  is  universal; 
and  the  children  of  the  kingdom  will  suffer  at  his 
hand.  We  often  think  of  persecution  as  tending 
merely  to  bring  an  undue  odium  on  the  persecutor 
and  an  undue  glory  on  the  persecuted;  we  say 
to-day  that  to  suffer  persecution  amounts  to  being 
willing,  at  the  cost  of  some  slight  inconvenience, 
to  purchase  undeserved  notoriety  and  sympathy; 
and  we  suppose  that,  as  Christians,we  have  attained 
to  such  a  degree  of  civilisation  that  serious  persecu- 
tion of  the  righteous  has  become  impossible.  We 
virtually  assume  that  the  blessing  of  Jesus  on  the 
persecuted  has  no  modern  significance.  Reflection 
will  show  that  human  nature  has  not  materially 
altered  since  the  first  dramatic  record  we  have  of 


86       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

the  characters  and  actions  of  men  and  women.  In 
the  earliest  Semitic  romances  and  legends,  in  the 
Greek  tragedies,  in  the  poetry  of  the  Dark  Ages, 
in  the  drama  of  the  Renaissance,  and  in  the  modern 
novel,  we  have  substantially  the  same  men  and 
women,  loving  and  hating  under  different  con- 
ditions, but  with  the  same  practical  result.  The 
outward  exhibition  of  persecution  must  needs  be 
very  different  in  different  times;  but  as  long  as 
men  hate  one  another  the  licensed  cruelty  of 
persecution  will  abound. 

To-day,  as  a  usual  thing,  we  do  not  maltreat 
our  religious  neighbours  in  any  material  fashion, 
although  place,  power,  and  wealth,  or  the  strength 
of  numbers,  are  sometimes  used  privately  to  penalise 
an  objectionable  form  of  religion.  Persecution  is 
thus  outwardly  softened,  not  because  the  spirit  is 
unwilling,  but  because  the  flesh,  through  a  recent 
acquisition  of  imaginative  sympathy,  is  weak. 
Probably,  through  that  same  increase  of  sensitive- 
ness, good  men  suffer  as  much  now  as  ever  from 
persecution.  Our  governments  are  now  democratic. 
To  disturb  the  religious  privileges  of  our  neigh- 
bours, or  increase  our  own,  we  must  have  recourse 
to  the  methods  of  the  demagogue.  The  eager 
imputation,  public  and  private,  of  unworthy 
motives,  evil  passions,  despicable  actions,  to  our 
opponents;  the  stirring  up  of  strife,  for  our  own 
religious  ends,  between  two  factions  in  a  village, 
between  two  neighbours  in  one  terrace,  between 
two  children  in  one  school  —  who  can  tell  the 
lingering  pain  of  wounded  hearts  and  narrowed 
lives   that  this   entails  ?     If  it   does   not   produce 


chap,  viii       SALVATION    BY    JOY  87 

widespread  spiritual  suffering  of  the  most  acute 
sort  we  are  sunk  low  indeed,  sunk  lower  than  any- 
thing that  we  can  call  Christianity.  But,  in  truth, 
the  pain  is  terribly  real  to  every  heart  inspired  by 
the  love  of  God. 

Although  the  suffering  of  persecution  was 
necessary  to  teach  the  world  what  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  really  was,  that  kingdom  was  not  presented 
as  dreary  but  as  full  of  joy.  Jesus  said,  "  Blessed 
are  ye  when  men  shall  revile  you,  and  cast  you  out 
of  the  synagogue,  and  hold  your  name  a  synonym 
for  evil,  because  you  exemplify  my  character  which 
is  love."  And  love,  whatever  it  suffer,  is  the 
greatest  source  of  joy.  The  child  of  the  kingdom 
was  to  be  the  recipient  of  all  other  joys.  Jesus 
does  not  say,  "Blessed  are  ye  when  attacked  by 
disease,  when  bereaved  of  dear  ones  by  premature 
death,  when  fortune  has  deserted  you,  when  you 
are  distracted  by  a  thousand  and  one  domestic 
cares  —  some  one's  insanity,  some  one's  folly,  some 
one's  helplessness."  All  these  forms  of  suffering 
were  to  be  cast  out  of  the  kingdom.  In  the 
kingdom  the  mourner  is  to  rejoice,  the  poor  to  be 
rich,  the  rich  to  be  poor;  the  heartless  shall  weep 
for  the  sorrows  of  others ;  the  sick  are  to  be  healed ; 
infirmities  of  will  are  to  be  cured;  food  and 
clothing  are  to  be  secure. 

If  Jesus  had  taught  that  to  mourn  for  any  and 
every  cause  in  this  world  brought  a  special  blessing 
on  character  and  special  comfort  in  the  next,  his 
own  actions  would  have  been  quite  inconsistent 
with  his  teaching,  for  he  turned  mourning  into  glad- 
ness in  every  case  when  the  opportunity  offered. 


88       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

If  a  sense  of  bereavement,  caused  by  premature 
death  and  immature  faith,  were  desirable  for  the 
strengthening  of  character  —  to  make  God  and  the 
things  of  God  dearer,  why  should  he  have  given 
Lazarus  back  to  Mary,  who  had  already  drunk 
so  deeply  of  his  own  teaching,  or  restored  to 
Jairus  his  little  daughter,  or  interfered,  apparently 
without  any  request,  to  dry  the  tears  of  the  widow 
of  Nain  ?  If  to  be  laid  aside  with  sickness  teaches 
men  lessons  of  virtue  and  a  knowledge  of  God 
which  they  can  learn  in  no  other  way,  or  if  sickness 
in  one  member  of  a  family  brings  out  the  highest 
characteristics  of  pity  and  service  in  the  others, 
why  did  he  abolish  this  means  of  blessing  in  a 
thousand  homes  ?  If  the  sight  of  a  lost  mind  is 
desirable  to  teach  intellectual  humility,  if  to  bear 
with  the  ill-balanced  and  uncontrolled  is  good  for 
the  spirit  of  man,  why  did  he  spend  so  much  time 
and  energy  in  the  casting  out  of  devils  ?  Nor  can 
we  acquiesce  for  a  moment  in  the  doctrine  that  he 
did  these  things  to  establish  the  fame  of  his  divinity, 
and  not  to  exemplify  the  eternal  attitude  of  God 
toward  man.  For  if  he  was  indeed  divine,  these 
things  must  exemplify  the  divine  dealing  with  men, 
and  if  he  was  not  divine  he  could  not  wish  to  claim 
divine  power.  If,  again,  it  be  argued  that  this 
was  his  way  of  exalting  his  message,  which  did  not 
deal  with  material  gifts,  we  must  reply  that  nothing 
can  exalt  a  message  that  is  not  in  absolute  harmony 
with  it.  If  he  had  taught  that  there  was  a  virtue 
in  mere  poverty,  in  want  as  want,  how  could 
his  early  followers  have  even  imagined  that  he 
would  provide  a  lavish  banquet  for  the  wedding 


chap,  viii       SALVATION    BY    JOY  89 

feast,  or  spread  so  plentiful  a  meal  in  the 
desert  ? 

The  Holy  Spirit,  with  whom  the  disciples  of 
Jesus  were  to  be  endowed  as  far  as  they  had  faith 
to  receive  him,  was  to  be  manifested  in  a  sense  of 
God's  perfect  forgiveness  and  blessing,  in  an  over- 
flow of  wisdom  and  gentleness  and  good  will,  and 
also  of  physical  health  —  health  sufficient  to  heal 
others.  How  great  would  be  their  joy  !  Health 
is  a  keen  relish  to  the  varied  feast  of  life.  Perfect 
health  of  body  and  mind  is  not  only  strength  but 
also  temperance  in  every  feeling  and  every  pursuit. 
If  we  accept  the  lesson  the  historic  Christ  taught, 
we  must  perceive  that  this  great  physical  joy 
underlay  the  joy  of  the  Spirit,  the  imparting  of 
which  was  the  glory  of  his  message. 

The  rejection  of  a  vice,  and  of  all  that  feeds 
or  tempts  it,  may  be  —  often  is,  by  a  stretch  of 
language  —  called  salvation  by  suffering;  but  in 
the  application  of  that  term  to  it  there  is  no  sense 
of  proportion,  no  common  sense;  for  continuance 
in  vice  means  greater  suffering.  For  example,  we 
read  to-day  of  thousands  of  Chinamen  eagerly 
curing  themselves  of  the  opium  habit,  destroying 
costly  pipes,  and  quantities  of  the  drug  itself,  in 
symbol  of  their  complete  conversion.  Is  their 
relief  from  this  craving,  their  return  to  a  whole- 
some life,  a  sorrow  or  a  joy  ?  They  themselves 
answer,  "Joy."  Every  drunkard,  every  slave  of 
any  vice,  who  testifies  to  the  sudden  reformation 
which  the  command  of  Jesus  to  cut  off  the  offend- 
ing member  so  exquisitely  describes,  echoes  the 
word    "joy."     Asceticism    would    have     given    a 


9o       HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    OURS 

different  command.  "If  thy  hand  or  thy  foot 
offend  thee,  punish  or  mortify  it  every  day  of  thy 
life."  The  faith  of  Jesus  always  leaped  forward 
to  meet  the  joy  on  the  other  side  of  heroism,  with 
perfect  confidence  in  the  power  and  will  of  God 
to  make  the  promise  good. 

If  in  any  case  Jesus  had  intimated  that  mis- 
fortune came  from  God,  that  sickness  was  more 
desirable  than  health,  or  mental  infirmity  better 
than  the  power  of  self-control,  the  whole  gospel 
would  have  been  other  than  it  is.  He  did  not 
regard  depression  of  spirits,  from  any  cause,  as 
salutary,  for  he  promised  to  give  his  followers  a 
constant  joy,  and  he  commanded  them  to  wear  a 
cheerful  demeanour  which  would  hearten  others; 
he  commanded  freedom  from  care.  There  are 
indeed  no  griefs,  no  forms  of  pain,  to  which  Jesus 
calls  men  to  resign  themselves  except  those  which 
result  from  the  hostility  of  men.  Such  pain  is 
to  be  embraced  in  joy  because  of  its  rich  reward. 

We  have  seen  that  in  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  the 
end  to  be  attained  was  perfection,  that  perfection 
to  his  mind  was  synonymous  with  love  and  also 
synonymous  with  God.  To  be  perfect  was  to  be 
like  God ;  to  be  like  God  was  to  be  like  a  loving 
father  who  comprehends  the  just  and  the  unjust, 
the  good  and  gracious,  the  unthankful  and  evil  in 
his  unceasing  benevolence.  Participation  in  the 
joy  of  God,  transcendent  yet  immanent  in  all 
nature,  is  the  dynamic  force  which  alone  can  raise 
the  Christian  to  this  altitude  of  love.  Joy  makes 
a  man  magnanimous,  gives  him  courage,  gives 
him    hope,    gives    him    the    strongest    motive    for 


chap,  vm       SALVATION    BY    JOY  91 

imparting  to  another.  The  first  real  taste  of  the 
joy  of  God  comes  as  the  wine  of  life,  and  lifts  a 
man  above  all  littleness,  all  discouragement,  all  his 
inheritance  of  dim  animistic  fear.  In  the  concep- 
tion of  Jesus  it  appears  that  love,  even  under  the 
most  extreme  misery  of  rejection  and  persecution, 
has  in  it  more  joy  than  sorrow.  Just  as  the 
soldier  in  dying  may  rejoice  that  he  dies  for  the 
sake  of  his  country,  so  the  Christian  in  suffering 
torture  and  contumely  for  exercising  love  has  more 
joy  than  pain,  because  he  suffers  for  God's  sake. 
But  in  the  Christian's  case  there  is  another  element 
of  joy  which  the  soldier  has  not;  the  Christian 
loves  the  enemy  or  persecutor  who  inflicts  the 
suffering,  and  is  taught  by  Jesus  to  believe  that 
that  love  will  not  be  wasted,  but  will  be  a  force  in 
the  remission  of  the  persecutor's  sin. 

The  cross  which  the  Christian  must  take  up 
daily  is  the  suffering  of  love.  The  life  he  must 
lose,  the  denial  of  his  own  ends  that  he  must 
practice,  are  all  included  in  the  activities  and 
consequences  of  that  love  for  men  which  he  must 
drink  in  with  the  Spirit  of  God.  Other  suffering 
Jesus  does  not  enjoin  or  bless.  Other  pains  exist 
as  sin  exists.  From  them,  as  from  sin,  Jesus 
offers  salvation.  Further,  the  one  form  of  suffer- 
ing that  he  blesses,  the  suffering  of  unrequited 
love,  is  not  blessed  because  it  is  suffering  —  not  at 
all  —  but  because  it  is  the  quickest  way  to  bring 
the  whole  world  into  the  paths  of  love  and  joy 
which  lead  to  perfection. 


BOOK    II 
THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 


93 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    CONFLICT   OF   THE    PHYSICAL   AND    MORAL 

Before  we  can  realise  how  hard  it  was  for  the 
high  conception  of  salvation  which  Jesus  taught 
to  obtain  possession  of  the  developing  world-mind, 
we  must  examine  the  history  of  the  earlier  idea 
that  man's  salvation  has  to  come  by  suffering. 

After  religious  systems  had  been  developed, 
and  before  the  Christian  revelation,  we  can 
trace  two  tendencies  in  the  evolution  of  human 
thought  with  regard  to  the  unseen:  the  state 
in  which  man,  whenever  he  did  not  feel  any  dis- 
union with  the  forces  about  him,  had  the  sort  of 
happiness  that  the  animal  world  evinces,  and 
whenever  he  suspected  himself  of  being  in  need 
of  reconciliation  with  unseen  power,  used  an  easy 
method  of  ceremonial  reconciliation  which  set  him 
at  ease;  secondly,  the  state  when  man  began  to 
doubt  the  efficacy  of  this  method.  These 
tendencies  of  thought,  representing  two  stages, 
are  still  traceable  in  the  religion  of  the  civilised 
individual  to-day,  and  form  a  curious  problem 
for  the  psychologist.  From  the  religious  history 
of  the  world,  as  far  as  we  can  read  it  now  in  the 

95 


96  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

traditions  and  writings  that  have  been  handed 
down  in  all  nations  and  in  the  unearthed  records 
deciphered  in  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  it 
seems  clear  that  all  different  tribes  and  nations 
did  go  through  these  transitions,  although  they 
are  indistinctly  seen  because  the  men  of  higher 
insight  in  any  nation  are,  in  mere  point  of  chrono- 
logical development,  ages  ahead  of  the  mass  of 
their  fellows,  and  those  in  the  rear  are  not  less 
prolific  in  religious  expression.  The  first  stage 
may  have  given  rise  to  the  myth  of  early  innocence 
present  in  more  than  one  legend  of  the  dim  past. 
St.  Paul  seems  to  have  been  familiar  with  the  same 
sort  of  idea,  to  which  the  thinkers  of  his  time 
had  come,  not  by  history  but  by  reasoning,  viz., 
that  before  the  inward  moral  law  was  perceived, 
the  race,  like  the  child,  must  have  felt  itself 
innocent. 

We  first  meet  our  fellow-man  conforming  to 
a  series  of  enactments  which  gave  him  a  very 
large  area  of  conscious  obedience  and  a  joyful 
sense  of  his  god's  approval.  These  enactments 
were  for  the  most  part  non-moral;  religion  meant 
that  the  god  had  made  a  covenant  to  approve  and 
aid  man  as  long  as  man  kept  them;  when  they 
were  broken  the  question  of  motive  did  not 
enter  at  all  into  the  matter;  the  breaking  might 
have  been  inadvertent,  it  might  have  been  un- 
avoidable; but  the  guilt  had  to  be  atoned  for 
at  once  by  certain  ceremonies,  or  the  quality  of 
guilt  spread  like  physical  infection  to  the  inno- 
cent family  and  race.  All  guilt  was  crime;  but 
crime  was,  on    the  whole,  in  early  times  some- 


ch.  i     THE    PHYSICAL   AND    MORAL     97 

what  recondite ;  and  whatever  was  not  crime  was 
blissful  innocence.  Atonement  was  made  by 
simple  ceremonies  and  a  gift.  Cain's  sacrifice 
was  at  one  period  amply  sufficient;  but,  with  a 
deepening  sense  of  the  gulf  between  man  and  the 
unseen  powers,  it  became  necessary  to  offer  a  life 
—  not  a  death,  but  a  life.  In  the  Semitic  races 
it  became  gradually  established  that  the  life  was 
in  the  blood,  and  blood  was  offered,  but  surely 
with  no  idea  of  pain,  as  almost  every  sacrifice 
involved  a  feast,  and  the  idea  of  putting  the 
animal  to  death  by  torture  to  make  the  sacrifice 
more  acceptable  was  unknown. 

Satisfaction  in  life  is  marred  by  the  growth 
of  the  sense  of  personal  responsibility  —  the  effort 
after  an  ever-receding  ethical  ideal.  On  the  first 
suspicion  any  man  anywhere  has  that  he  is  morally, 
not  merely  ceremonially  unclean  —  actually,  not 
merely  legally,  a  sinner  —  perfect  joy  in  physical 
strength  and  beauty  is  gone;  art  ceases  to  be 
happy  and  loses  its  first  perfection.  He  goes 
on  to  realise  that  there  is  in  his  members  a  law 
of  sin  and  death  —  sin  of  his  own  deep  essence,  a 
real  "ought"  within  which  he  cannot  satisfy  by 
obedience  to  any  code,  and  which  would  not  be 
appeased  by  offering  anything  external  to  himself 
to  any  deity  who  could  accept  such  offering. 
Then  falls  upon  that  man  the  shadow  of  conscious 
sin.  The  sunshine  of  nature  was  darkened  long 
before  the  hour  of  Calvary.  Blight  comes  with 
lack  of  sunshine;  the  first  blossom  of  naturalism 
withers;  efforts  after  beauty  and  harmony  bear 
less  fruit;    music  is  plaintive;    every  honest  rep- 


98  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

resentation  of  the  awakened  human  life  is  satiric 
or  tragic.  In  this  man,  and  with  cumulative 
strength  in  his  children's  children,  two  opposed 
passions  rise  and  grapple  together,  like  Jacob  and 
the  Angel  of  God,  the  material  man  demanding 
material  good,  the  moral  man  demanding  the 
unison  of  might  and  right  —  the  legitimate  demand 
of  the  body  upon  a  faithful  Creator  for  the  un- 
alloyed delight  of  its  every  sense;  the  ever- 
growing demand  of  conscience  for  moral  perfection. 
The  existence  of  the  body  and  its  senses  stands, 
must  always  stand,  for  a  real,  if  unrealised, 
covenant  of  faithful  creator  with  sentient  creature. 
The  physical  nature  is  not  responsible  for  existence, 
and  claims,  therefore,  with  unerring  instinct  the 
right  of  realising  every  natural  hope  —  a  right 
that  no  sophistries  can  diminish.  The  increasing 
imperative  of  the  moral  nature  demands  harmony 
between  the  real  and  the  right,  demands  that  the 
material  world,  the  body,  the  universe  if  need  be, 
shall  be  sacrificed  to  the  "ought."  We  see  these 
two  inappeasable  passions  strive  together  in  the 
long  night  wherever  in  the  world  man  rises  above 
mere  material  joys  and  primitive  ceremonial. 
The  Angel  of  the  Lord  grapples  with  Jacob  and 
sets  him  on  his  way  halting.  Everywhere,  in 
all  nations,  the  moral  standard  rises,  or  the  race 
perishes;  but  as  the  moral  standard  rises,  the 
physical  nature  is  lamed.  The  early  delight  in 
mere  living  fails,  leaving  only  a  poetic  tradition 
of  man's  first  paradise,  his  Golden  Age  —  a  source 
of  longing,  an  infinite  regret. 

There    is    no    reason    for    regret.      The    non- 


ch.  i     THE    PHYSICAL   AND    MORAL      99 

moral  man  who  could  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry 
whenever  he  had  no  cause  for  fear,  and  who  when 
afraid  could  satisfy  his  gods  perfectly  by  the  very 
ceremonies  of  eating,  drinking,  and  being  merry, 
who  was  content  to  die  on  the  morrow  without 
a  thought  of  an  after  that  was  not  fulfilled  in  the 
life  of  his  tribe  —  this  man  did  not  persist.  The 
halt  creature,  the  moral  man,  was  fitter  to  sur- 
vive, did  survive.  Wailing  out  prayers,  singing 
penitential  psalms,  crying  after  a  God  who 
desired  righteousness,  not  of  ceremony  but  of 
the  thoughts  of  the  heart  —  this  man  grew  and 
multiplied,  and  built  greater  cities  and  framed 
better  laws;  but  physical  beauty  palled  on  his 
taste;  his  arts  reflected  his  grief;  unaffected  joy 
was  lost.  In  this  transition  the  earlier  Vedic 
tribes  add  to  the  worship  of  their  cheerful  gods 
the  cult  of  the  gloomy  fakir;  the  golden  calf  of 
the  dancing  Semite  is  given  up  for  the  ark  of  the 
covenant  which  it  is  death  to  touch;  the  sunny 
pantheon  becomes  the  gloomy,  if  more  beautiful, 
Gothic  sanctuary  where  the  light  of  heaven  may 
only  enter  stained  by  carnal  crucifixions  and 
bloody  martyrdoms.  Though  the  moral  man 
was  stronger  than  the  non-moral  and  superseded 
him,  he  had  plucked  out  an  eye,  he  had  cut  off 
the  member  that  offended  :  halt,  maimed,  and  with 
one  eye,  he  entered  into  life  —  otherwise  he  would 
have  passed,  as  all  that  is  unfit  passes.  Before 
man  could  dream  of  a  further  perfection  he  must 
learn  to  prize  virtue  before  all  things. 

Before   he   can   attain   that   further   perfection, 
man  must  find  out  how  to  be  good  and  whole- 


ioo  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

hearted  at  the  same  time.  The  body  cannot  be 
filled  with  the  fulness  of  the  Lord  until  it  resume 
the  physical  perfection  of  unspoiled  nature. 
Even  in  the  childlike  symbol  of  primitive  ritual, 
nothing  maimed,  broken,  or  blind  could  be 
offered  to  the  Lord;  how  much  less  in  any  real 
sense  can  the  God  of  nature  inspire  with  the 
beginning  of  a  perfect  and  progressive  righteous- 
ness a  race  that  has  lost  half  its  power  of  enjoy- 
ment, that  corresponds  with  its  environment  so 
imperfectly  that  the  individual  must  always  be 
cherishing  his  soul  at  the  expense  of  his  body,  or 
his  body  at  the  expense  of  his  soul. 

When  Jesus  began  his  ministry  the  whole 
religious  world  was  practically  divided  into  two 
minds  and  two  tempers.  The  poor  in  spirit  and 
the  meek  were  busy  crying,  "Blessed  is  the  man 
whom  God  chasteneth;"  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  those  in  every  nation  who  in  mind  and 
temper  were  not  poor  in  spirit,  but  yet  were 
concerned  for  salvation,  still  clung  to  legal  devices 
which  became  more  and  more  elaborate.  With 
these  latter  the  explanation  of  suffering  was  still 
that  it  was  the  punishment  of  sin:  "This  mul- 
titude that  knoweth  not  the  law  are  cursed," 
is  the  epitome  of  the  moving  sermon  attributed 
to  Moses  in  Deuteronomy.  The  way  to  escape  it 
was  to  be  sinless ;  the  way  to  be  sinless  was  to  con- 
form to  a  legal  code.  As  suffering  was  the  direct 
punishment  of  immediate  sin,  there  was  no  need 
for  an  uncomfortable  degree  of  compassion  for 
those  who  suffered.  To  draw  back  the  skirts 
and  pass  on  was  legitimate  to  priest  and  lawyer; 


ch.  i    THE    PHYSICAL   AND    MORAL     101 

and  as  long  as  personal  suffering  was  escaped  the 
faithful  legalist  did  not  anticipate  it:  he  thus  got 
rid  of  compassion,  compunction,  and  apprehension; 
he  thanked  God  that  he  was  not  as  other  men; 
he  said  that  the  people  that  knew  not  his  law  were 
cursed.  But,  as  we  have  noted,  this  was  no 
longer  the  only  interpretation  of  suffering.  The 
idea  of  salvation  by  suffering  had  been  welded 
into  the  heart  of  the  better  sort  of  pious  men 
everywhere  by  the  development  of  conscience  that 
rendered  mere  animal  joy  insufficient,  by  the 
teaching  of  the  prophets,  and  by  the  imperative 
demand  of  human  reason  for  a  soul  of  good  in 
things  evil.  The  refining  result  of  suffering 
upon  the  character  of  the  sufferer  is  the  first 
benefit  to  be  extracted  from  the  mystery  of  pain. 
This  result  is  obvious,  it  has  been  noticed  by 
all  people  whenever  a  race  has  reached  the  stage 
of  moral  reflection.  Such  a  plan  of  salvation 
was  familiar  to  the  Buddhist,  to  the  Hindoo,  to 
the  Persian,  to  the  Alexandrine  Greek,  and,  above 
all,  to  the  pious  Jew  of  the  Christian  era;  the 
large  use  made  of  chastisement  for  the  moral 
interpretation  of  experience  in  the  books  of  the 
Apocrypha  and  the  Apocalyptic  literature  is  very 
striking. 

This  distinction  between  the  two  classes  of  pie- 
tists was  very  clear  among  the  Jews  at  the  time 
of  our  Lord,  and  other  Semitic  religions  were 
going  through  the  same  phase.  The  two  classes 
of  religious  thinkers  were  like  antiphonal  choirs, 
and  their  views  were  alternately  contrasted  and 
confused  in  the  national  psalms  that  went  up  to 


io2  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

God.  We  cannot  doubt  that  the  Father,  pitying 
his  children,  accepted  the  worship  of  both;  we 
cannot  doubt  that  they  who  mourned  for  sin,  the 
meek  and  lowly,  who  looked  to  sorrow  rather  than 
to  law  as  a  means  of  grace,  were  on  a  higher  plane, 
more  blessed  because  more  ripe  for  comfort,  more 
ready  to  inherit  the  earth  and  possess  the  kingdom 
of  heaven. 

All  the  time,  even  through  the  long  past  in 
which  these  different  ideas  of  salvation  had  been 
growing,  apart  from  the  fire  and  apart  from  the 
whirlwind,  there  had  been  another  voice,  proclaim- 
ing a  God  of  greater  power  and  more  resource, 
whose  ways  were  higher  than  man's  ways  as  the 
heaven  was  higher  than  the  earth,  a  voice  so  still 
and  small  that  it  obtained  little  authority  with  men 
till  Jesus  came  to  give  it  authority.  This  was  his 
news  —  that  not  by  legal  obedience,  nor  yet  by  grief, 
could  men  learn  to  know  God,  but  by  the  dynamic 
power  of  his  joy.  To  him  the  salient  characteristic 
of  God's  kingdom  on  earth  was  that  they  that 
mourn  should  rejoice.  He  perceived,  as  others 
did  not,  that  a  contradiction  was  involved  in 
crediting  heaven  with  the  fire  that  consumed  the 
sacrifice. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    USE    OF    SIN 

There  is  a  large  tendency  of  thought  which, 
in  order  to  ensure  God's  omnipotence  and  moral 
character,  seeks  to  regard  moral  evil  as  a  good 
means  to  a  good  end.  We  are  here  assuming  — 
what  was  the  belief  of  Jesus  —  that  for  any  man  to 
choose  the  lower  instead  of  the  higher  path  is  a 
wrong  to  himself,  to  mankind,  and  to  God.  This, 
however,  is  not  to  assert  that  the  spirit  of  good 
may  not  borrow  some  advantage  from  things  evil. 

But  the  idea  of  sin  as  a  saviour  is  not  satisfactory. 
St.  Paul  says  all  that  can  be  said  as  to  the  place  of 
sin  in  God's  scheme  of  salvation :  the  moral  law, 
which  makes  sin,  is  a  schoolmaster  that  brings 
men  to  God.  Without  a  law  there  is  no  sin; 
without  sin  there  is  no  knowledge  of  the  eternal 
demand  for  a  course  of  right  action  to  which  men 
cannot,  of  their  own  powers,  attain.  What  is  it 
that  drives  most  persons  at  first  to  any  experience 
of  God's  grace  ?  Is  it  not  the  burden  of  sin  ? 
Some  saintly  people  there  may  be  who  enter  the 
kingdom  and  grow  strong  therein  without  such 
transgression  of  the   law  of  inward   rectitude   as 

103 


io4  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

drives  them  to  demand  of  God  some  personal 
assurance  of  forgiveness  and  help;  but  if  there  are 
any  such  they  are  very  few.  The  overwhelming 
majority  of  the  devout  have  found  God  at  first, 
and  most  constantly,  and  in  some  crisis  have 
experienced  the  deepest  knowledge  of  his  self- 
revelation,  because  of  their  sins.  As  Julian  of 
Norwich  shrewdly  remarks,  "For  it  needeth  us  to 
fall,  and  it  needeth  us  to  see  it.  For  if  we  never 
fell,  we  should  not  know  how  feeble  and  how 
wretched  we  are  of  our  self,  and  also  we  should  not 
fully  know  the  marvellous  love  of  our  Maker.  .  .  . 
And  by  the  assay  of  this  falling  we  shall  have  an 
high,  marvellous  knowing  of  love  in  God,  without 
end."  *  We  have  many  saintly  authorities  on  this 
gracious  utility  of  sin;  but  we  may  turn  to  the 
highest.  When  Jesus  confronted  the  Pharisee  with 
the  riddle  of  the  two  debtors,  he  virtually  said, 
"The  greater  a  man's  sin  the  greater  his  love  to 
God";  and  if  we  would  partly  explain  this  away 
by  making  consciousness  of  sin,  and  not  its  abun- 
dance, the  cause  of  man's  love  to  God,  we  still 
cannot  get  rid  of  the  fact  that  Jesus  in  this  parable 
still  speaks  of  sin  as  the  root  out  of  which  this 
sacred  growth  of  worship  springs.  Or  take  the 
inverse  truth,  which  he  taught  most  strongly,  that 
God's  heart  goes  out  after  the  sinner  because  of 
his  sin,  and  God's  saving  energy  will  not  be  baffled 
in  revealing  itself  to  those  who  are  lost,  although 
it  may  fail  to  save  those  who  are  a  law  unto  them- 
selves. It  has  not  been  the  fashion  in  the  Church 
to  dwell  on  the  godly  utility  of  sin ;   if  it  were,  we 

1  Revelations  of  Divine  Love,  Chap.  6l. 


chap,  n  THE   USE   OF   SIN 


05 


should  all  be  taking  note  of  the  enlightenment 
which  has  come  to  our  souls  through  our  sins,  and 
writing  of  it  in  our  memoirs. 

Another  consideration  with  regard  to  sin  is  that 
in  the  concrete  there  is  no  clear  line  of  distinction 
between  moral  good  and  moral  evil  or  between 
moral  and  physical  evil.  That  there  is  a  vast  differ- 
ence between  certain  goods  and  certain  evils  does 
not  diminish  the  force  of  the  fact  that  there  is  no 
boundary-line  except  in  thought.  We  are  there- 
fore bound  to  accept  sin  as  a  factor  in  the  moral 
progress  of  man.  Take,  for  example,  the  case  of 
a  primitive  tribe  of  men  whom  we  may  suppose  to 
have  risen  above  the  sins  of  killing  members  of 
their  own  tribe  without  due  offence,  and  above 
cannibalism.  Some  cataclysm  of  nature  inflicts 
famine  upon  them.  They  suffer  evil  acutely  in 
its  three  forms,  —  pain,  the  ugliness  of  physical  ruin, 
and  the  relapse  into  the  brute.  They  fall  to  killing 
and  devouring  one  another,  and  by  so  doing  they 
survive  and  rise  again  in  better  times.  Their 
behaviour  is  that  of  a  herd  of  beasts  who,  when 
similarly  put  to  it,  would  similarly  preserve  them- 
selves. Can  we  say  that  if  it  is  right  for  the  beast 
it  is  wrong  for  the  savage  ?  If  the  savage  has  that 
glimmer  of  moral  light  that  makes  it  wrong,  are 
we  sure  that  the  animal  has  not  ?  It  is  wiser  to 
admit  that  we  have  no  knowledge  that  warrants 
such  inference  ?  Again,  can  we  say  that  when  any 
human  society,  visited  by  calamity,  falls  from  better 
to  worse,  there  is  no  moral  evil  as  part  of  the  cause  ? 
Can  we  in  such  a  case  make  any  distinction  between 
the  evil  they  do  and  the  evil  that  is  thrust  upon 


106  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

them  ?  Good  and  evil,  physical  and  moral  evil, 
are  here  welded  together.  If  we  try  to  apply  the 
religious  idea  and  ask  where  God's  will  is  in 
harmony  with  his  creation  and  where  it  is  violated, 
we  must  perceive  that  many  of  our  conventional 
ideas  have  little  basis.  The  position  of  the  commu- 
nity in  our  city  slums ;  the  condition  of  every  child 
born  and  trained  in  their  depraved  atmosphere, 
is  analogous  to  that  of  the  primitive  tribe  in  point 
of  moral  responsibility.  The  starving  child  who 
steals  a  loaf  and  survives  is  probably  fitter  to 
survive  even  for  moral  ends  than  one  who  shows 
less  resource  and  dies.  In  such  cases  our  moralists 
are  wont  to  point  out  that  the  bad  behaviour 
thus  thrust  upon  each  generation  was  first  the 
behaviour  of  their  ancestors.  This,  however,  can- 
not be  urged  of  the  primitive  tribe  we  have  cited ; 
and  the  likeness  between  the  childhood  of  the 
race  and  that  of  each  generation  in  respect  of 
moral  behaviour  is  so  close  that  there  is  a  strong 
presumption  that  a  distinction  not  found  to  be 
actual  in  the  one  is  not  actual  in  the  other. 

The  religious  mind  which  calls  its  God  the 
creator  and  sustainer  of  all,  must  face  the  fact  that 
in  the  extricable  confusion  of  good  and  evil  his 
sustaining  activity  must  be  engaged.  God's  pur- 
pose is,  we  believe,  the  advance  of  man  toward  a 
positive  good  that  will  overcome  evil.  The  mere 
negation  of  wrong  can  have  no  value  for  him. 
The  man  who  sins  is  higher  in  the  scale,  more 
approved  of  God,  nearer  to  the  divine  nature,  than 
the  vegetable  or  animal  which  obeys  God's  law 
perfectly   because   it  cannot   do  otherwise.     How 


chap,  ii  THE    USE    OF.  SIN  107 

beautiful  to  us,  how  fresh  and  strong,  does  this 
dutiful  aspect  of  nature  appear !  Yet  the  man 
who  can  choose  between  right  and  wrong,  and 
chooses,  even  if  he  choose  wrong,  is  still  above  all 
enforced  good.  In  religious  fact,  as  opposed  to 
religious  theory,  sin,  although  only  a  bad  bye- 
product  of  free  will,  is  a  stepping-stone  to  higher 
things.  It  has  a  degree  of  good  in  it.  It  must 
be,  in  some  sense,  God's  will.  It  is  used  by  God 
as  a  means  to  work  out  his  own  purposes,  as  the 
lives  of  the  greatest  and  best  men  all  show. 

Can  we,  then,  argue  that  God  sends  sin  for  our 
salvation?  to  bring  us  to  himself?  "Shall  we 
continue  in  sin  that  grace  may  abound?"  We 
exalt  the  saving  grace  of  pain  in  our  religious 
biographies;  shall  we  exalt  the  saving  grace  of  sin 
also  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  lose  hold  of  the 
strong  common  sense  of  all  true  religion  when  we 
do  this;  we  cease  to  be  pure  in  heart  and  cease  to 
see  God. 

This  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  metaphysical 
argument  by  which  evil  may  be  proved  to  have  no 
reality.  We  are  not  dealing  with  the  problems  of 
metaphysics  but  with  the  facts  of  life,  and  such  fair 
inferences  from  them  as  may  tend  to  correct  our 
conventional  estimate  of  God. 

We  have  seen  that  while  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  sin  is  part  of  God's  plan  for  man's  salvation, 
we  refuse,  and  rightly,  to  regard  it  as  God's  will 
that  any  man  should  sin.  Have  we  any  more 
justification  for  regarding  it  as  God's  will  that  he 
should   suffer  ? 


CHAPTER  III 


THE    USE    OF    PAIN 


The  grave  difficulties  attending  any  attempt  to 
reconcile  belief  in  God's  universal  providence  with 
the  almost  universal  existence  of  sin  which  we 
believe  he  must  abhor,  remain  unsolved;  mean- 
while it  does  not  make  the  problem  of  evil  simpler 
to  represent  God,  while  hating  sin,  as  actually 
visiting  pain  and  grief  upon  sentient  creatures. 
It  would  seem  more  reasonable  to  think  of  a  good 
God  as  abhorring  suffering  in  men  as  he  abhors 
sin,  and  actually  working  with  man  always  for  joy 
as  he  does  for  righteousness. 

It  is  clearly  necessary  for  the  religious  man  to 
regard  a  personal  God  in  two  aspects  —  as  taking 
the  responsibility  of  omnipotence  for  everything 
that  takes  place,  and  as,  at  the  same  time,  exercis- 
ing a  preference  and  governing  all  things  for  the 
advantage  of  what  he  prefers.  For  example,  the 
monotheist  must  regard  sin  as  within  God's  will 
for  the  world;  and  if  he  be  also  a  moralist  he  must 
also  believe  that  God  prefers  righteousness,  and 
ordains  all  things  for  the  advantage  of  his  prefer- 
ence. 

108 


chap,  in  THE   USE    OF    PAIN  109 

In  other  words,  there  is  an  aspect  in  which  we 
must  believe,  if  we  believe  in  an  almighty  God, 
that  he  is  responsible  for  every  sin  and  folly  in 
creation;  that,  having  an  end  in  view  which  is 
worth  the  price  to  be  paid  in  sin  and  folly,  he  has 
counted  the  cost  and  pays  the  price.  In  that  same 
sense  pain  and  misery  must,  of  course,  be  laid 
directly  at  God's  door.  A  father  sending  his  son 
into  the  school  playground  knows  that  many  a  cut 
and  bruise  will  befall  him  —  a  broken  bone,  perhaps, 
or  an  infectious  disease.  The  end  in  view  is  worth 
the  risk.  But  it  would  involve  a  very  different 
kind  of  father  to  give  the  child  intentionally  a  cut 
or  bruise,  or  break  one  of  his  bones,  or  infect  him 
with  a  disease,  and  very  much  the  kind  of  father 
who  would  lead  his  son  into  vice.  Looking  back, 
we  find  that  it  is  a  mere  matter  of  history  that  the 
nations  who  have  affirmed  God's  willingness  to 
risk  sin  and  denied  his  more  direct  will  to  bring  it 
about,  have  progressed,  and  the  nations  that  have 
not  made  that  distinction  have  passed  away  or  are 
awaiting  some  new  impulse  of  life.  It  behooves  us, 
then,  to  consider  whether  further  progress  does 
not  depend  upon  recognising  God  as  the  author 
only  of  delight  as  he  is  the  author  only  of  righteous- 
ness. Familiarity  has  led  the  modern  religious 
mind  to  assume  an  extraordinary  discrepancy  in 
God's  ways,  to  suppose  that,  while  sin  in  man  is 
not  of  God  but  purely  evil,  pain,  though  the 
consequence  of  sin,  is  God's  will,  and  therefore 
purely  good.  The  belief  that  God  can  suffer  but 
cannot  sin  is  not  enough  to  justify  this.1 

1  See  Appendix  A. 


no  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

We  are  faced  with  the  need  for  a  new  move- 
ment forward  :  the  temporary  resting-place  which 
the  religious  mind  gained  by  shutting  off  moral 
evil  only  as  contrary  to  the  will  of  God  is  ours  no 
longer;  moral  and  physical  evil  merge  indis- 
tinguishably  into  one  another,  and  contradiction 
must  enter  into  our  conception  of  God's  character 
as  long  as  the  religious  mind  makes  him  directly 
responsible  for  the  latter  and  not  for  the  former. 
In  the  sense  in  which  God  is  responsible  for  moral 
evil  he  is  responsible  for  physical  evil,  and  surely 
in  no  other  sense. 

There  are  pressing  reasons  for  rejecting  the 
idea  that  salvation  comes  by  pain.  We  have  seen 
that  the  average  Jew  had  learned  to  think,  before 
Jesus  came,  that  God  could  do  no  wrong.  Sadly 
enough,  the  definiteness  with  which  he  believed 
God  to  be  always  right  depended  upon  his  ability 
to  approve  of  the  cruel  judgments  which  his  sacred 
books  attributed  to  God.  (This  is  seen  in  the 
varying  outlooks  of  the  authors  of  the  latest  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  Apocryphal  and 
Apocalyptic  literature.)  Now  here  we  see  the 
causal  connection  between  attributing  to  God  the 
authorship  of  man's  afflictions  and  supposing  that 
cruelty  is  at  times  a  virtue.  Why  should  we 
return  good  for  evil  if  God  by  direct  intention 
returns  evil  for  evil  ?  Why  should  we  deal  out  to 
men  only  generosity  and  gentleness  if  God  wields 
the  rod  even  in  training  his  most  obedient 
children  ?  The  theologian  is  apt  to  fancy  that  it 
is  possible  to  say  that  such  a  line  of  conduct  is 
right    for   God    but   not   for   us;     but   it   is   mere 


chap,  in  THE   USE   OF    PAIN  m 

matter  of  history  that  the  religious  man  can  never 
practically  say,  "Vengeance  is  for  God  but  not  for 
me."  Jesus  knew  what  was  in  man  far  better 
when  he  urged  a  life  of  perfect  gentleness  and 
unending  generosity,  by  the  argument  that  it  was 
God's  perfection  to  bless  the  evil  as  well  as  the 
good,  and  by  the  example  of  his  own  miracles, 
which  exemplified  the  doctrine.  The  effort  to 
copy  God's  perfection  is  of  the  essence  of  religion; 
this  desire  to  copy  God  is  therefore  quite  irre- 
sistible to  the  religious  man.  When  he  believes 
that  God  wields  the  rod,  he  himself  also  wields  it, 
—  in  religious  controversy,  in  civic  and  national 
relations;  and  in  so  doing  he  fights  with  the 
weapons  of  the  enemy,  and  becomes  a  futile  agent, 
like  a  mad  soldier  striking  wildly,  now  at  the 
enemy,  now  at  his  own  leader. 

As  men  believe  God  to  be,  so  they  are.  As 
long  as  the  Hebrew  believed  in  a  national  God 
his  charity  had  national  limits.  It  was  not  until 
the  thinkers  of  the  Roman  hierarchy  had  arrived 
at  the  idea  that  salvation  could  be  had  beyond 
their  own  communion  that  their  finer  charity  went 
out  to  men  of  other  religions.  As  a  matter  of 
everyday  fact,  no  good  man  who  dwells  upon 
"God's  use  of  the  rod,"  and  kindred  forms  of 
religious  phraseology,  carries  forgiveness  to  his 
enemies  or  opponents  very  far.  Long  before  the 
"seventy  times  seven"  is  reached  he  lends  himself 
as  an  instrument  to  what  he  supposes  to  be  the 
divine  wrath.  The  radical  cause  of  this  is 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  when  the  enmity  is  not 
personal  his  anger  is  more  unchecked ;  forgiveness, 


ii2  THE   FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

even  in  the  first  place,  is  not  essayed  because  the 
anger  is  supposed  to  be  on  behalf  of  God;  an 
attitude  virtually  insolent  is  at  once  almost  un- 
consciously assumed  toward  those  thought  to  be 
living  in  error.  That  many  humble  souls  of  finest 
fibre  rise  above  this  coarseness  of  vision  is  due  to 
that  continual  florescence  of  a  divine  principle 
which  we  recognise  in  the  words,  "His  heart  is 
better  than  his  creed ;"  but  that  the  average 
Christian  indulges  himself  in  rancour  and  ill-temper 
under  cover  of  what  he  believes  to  be  the  punitive 
disposition  of  Providence  is  attested  by  the  re- 
ligious polemics  of  Christendom. 

If  we  turn  to  consider  the  development  accord- 
ing to  experience  of  human  theories  of  govern- 
ment, we  cannot  but  perceive  that  a  very  important 
change  has  been  going  on.  Man  has  long  and 
universally  tried  to  abolish  crime  by  the  most 
severe  penalties ;  and  it  is  only  after  ages  of  legal 
experiment  that  he  has  been  convinced  that  what 
appears  to  him  the  proper  result  of  legal  experiment 
is  not  its  result.  Experience  shows  that  the  only 
real  deterrent  is  a  higher  moral  standard;  and  the 
sort  of  fear  that  terrorism  produces  is  certainly 
not  moral  fear.  When  the  psalmist  said  to  God, 
"There  is  forgiveness  with  thee  that  thou  mayest 
be  feared,"  he  expressed  a  very  deep  psychological 
law.  If,  then,  we  see  that  man  in  his  attempts 
to  govern  his  fellow-man  has  made  a  universal 
mistake,  which  was  indeed  hardly  suspected  till 
yesterday,1  we  shall  be  prepared  to  admit  that  his 

1  See  the  reflection  of  popular  opinion  in  the  speech  of  King 
Edward  VII.  in  opening  the  new  Central  Criminal  Court,  Lon- 


THE   USE   OF    PAIN 


IJ3 


fallacious  notions  of  human  discipline  may  have 
given  him  a  fallacious  notion  of  the  divine  meth- 
ods; in  which  case  we  must  alter  our  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  plan  of  government  heretofore 
supposed  to  be  exhibited  in  such  cases  as  the  death 
of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  St.  Paul's  thorn  in  the 
flesh,  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  and  the 
innumerable  misfortunes  and  diseases  which  for 
two  thousand  years  Christians  have  attributed  to 
the  will  of  God. 

There  is  now  a  large  consensus  of  moral  opinion 
in  favour  of  the  view  that  legal  penalties  are 
justified  only  in  so  far  as  they  aim  at  the  benefit 
of  the  criminal,  and  that  only  by  reforming  the 
criminal  can  society  be  adequately  protected. 
This  stage  in  civic  development  corresponds  to 
the  religious  stage  at  which  the  idea  of  expiating 
guilt  by  physical  suffering  is  perceived  to  be 
fallacious.  The  next  belief  of  statesmen  and 
theologians  appears  to  be  that  the  infliction  of 
penalties  by  way  of  discipline  is  desirable.  And 
yet  the  reflective  are  aware  that  this  is  no  logical 
resting-place,  that  just  in  so  far  as  penalties  are 
merely  distressful  to  the  criminal  they  fail  to  infect 
him  with  that  love  for  mankind  which  is  the  only 
root  of  good  behaviour.  It  is  not  pain  that  lifts 
him,  but  other  elements  in  punishment.  We 
dimly  feel,  even  with  regard  to  the  most  degraded 

don:  "The  barbarous  penal  code  which  was  deemed  necessary 
a  hundred  years  ago  has  gradually  been  replaced,  in  the  progress 
toward  a  higher  civilisation,  by  laws  breathing  a  more  humane 
spirit  and  aiming  at  a  nobler  purpose.  ...  I  look  with  con- 
fidence to  those  who  will  administer  justice  in  this  building  to 
have  continued  regard  to  the  hope  of  reform  in  the  criminal." 


ii4  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

criminal,  that  just  as  brutal  punishments  would 
brutalise  him  further,  so  there  is  no  infliction  that 
tends  to  his  advancement;  that  as  love  is  the  only 
force  that  inexorably  compels  to  the  highest 
ethical  achievement,  so  love  is  the  only  force  that 
can  illuminate  the  lowest  ethical  depths.  We 
perceive,  even  in  the  matter  of  parental  discipline, 
that  to  talk  of  inflicting  distress  as  a  form  of  love 
is  in  reality  a  confusion  of  thought,  because 
punitive  discipline  at  best  is  the  use  of  an  inferior 
instrument,  implying  a  lack  of  resource  in  the 
parent  or  state  that  wields  it.  It  is  not  a  form 
of  love,  but  a  form  of  expediency;  it  is  not 
the  expression  of  power,  but  the  expression  of 
impotence.  The  most  that  can  truly  be  said  for 
force  used  either  in  punishment  or  war  is  that 
we  find  it  necessary.  Because  we,  even  while 
experiencing  sentiments  of  affection,  are  still  some- 
times harassed  by  our  limitations  into  the  use  of 
an  inferior  method,  are  we  therefore  justified  in 
continuing  to  attribute  to  God  what  we  know  to 
be  an  inferior  method  ?  If  the  change  that  has 
come  over  the  civilised  mind  in  the  treatment  of 
criminals  and  children  is  a  real  reformation  and 
advance,  it  must  be  reflected  in  our  ideas  of  God's 
treatment  of  us,  unless  theology  is  to  fall  behind, 
only  to  find  its  reformation  by  a  long  battle  of 
doubtful  issue  with  sects  which  will  vindicate 
God's  character  in  ways  more  or  less  partial  and 
extreme. 

Therefore,  since  moral  progress  seems  to  be 
along  the  line  of  dissociating  the  thought  of  suf- 
fering  from   the  thought  of  true    purgation,  and 


chap,  in  THE    USE    OF    PAIN  115 

so  from  the  thought  of  God's  will,  the  fact  that 
many  of  us  are  so  constituted  as  naturally  to  think 
suffering  salutary  to  the  moral  nature  is  no  con- 
clusive argument  for  it,  because  historically  we 
have  seen  that  many  convictions  have  held  the 
race  until  experience  disproved  them  in  most 
unexpected  ways. 

There  are  two  great  powers  that  rule  us,  pain 
and  joy,  and  the  greater  of  these  is  joy.  But 
humanity  in  one  stage  of  its  progress  deeply 
believes  that  pain  is  the  greater.  This  belief  has 
by  the  storm  and  stress  of  the  past  been  woven 
into  those  tendencies  of  thought  that  we  call 
instinctive.  We  try  to  rule  ourselves  by  pain; 
we  try  to  rule  others  by  pain;  the  Church  has 
chiefly  tried  to  guide  men  by  insisting  on  the 
power  of  pain.  We  go  back  to  the  records 
of  the  gospel,  and  find  that  the  Christ  preached 
joy,  put  forward  joy,  as  the  chief  factor  in  the 
redemption  of  the  world.  We  cannot  at  once 
analyse  what  this  means,  because  we  have  believed 
God  to  be  the  volitional  source  of  our  pain. 
The  supreme  moral  reason  for  rejecting  this  old 
belief  is  that  it  has  robbed  the  gospel  of  the  joy 
with  which  Jesus  invested  it.  Religion  is  not  now 
the  source  of  much  joy.  What  Christian  man  is 
there  amongst  us  who  does  not  rejoice  more  in  a 
medical  consulting-room  when  told  that  he  can  be 
cured  of  his  disease,  or  in  his  lawyer's  office  when 
told  that  he  is  heir  to  thousands,  or  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  woman  he  loves  when  his  hand  is  ac- 
cepted in  marriage,  than  when  he  understands  that 
wisdom  to  know  and  take  the  right  course,  to  his 


u6  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

worldly  detriment,  will  be  given  him  in  a  difficulty  ? 
Indeed,  how  many  are  there  among  us  who  would 
not  rather  hear  of  any  success  of  his  children  in 
the  competition  of  life,  of  any  rise  in  the  stocks  in 
which  he  has  invested,  of  any  local  victory  of  his 
political  party,  than  hear  that  a  heathen  province 
has  put  on  Christ  ?  It  may  be  true  that  thousands 
who  feel  quite  naturally  and  simply  that  the  chief 
joys  of  life  lie  in  matters  unconnected  with  the 
Christian  hope  would  still  rather  relinquish  all 
else  than  that  hope.  "All  that  a  man  has  will  he 
give  for  his  life;"  even,  and  chiefly,  when  that 
life  is  one  long  grumble;  and  a  Christian  man 
may  esteem  the  faithfulness  of  Christ  the  first 
necessity  of  life  without  having  any  faith  that  is 
better  than  a  grumble.  Joy,  with  its  dynamic 
force,  has  gone  out  of  our  religion,  whose  total 
force  is  thereby  greatly  diminished.  We  cannot 
even  conceive  of  the  extent  of  our  lack,  because 
what  God  would  give  to  a  fuller  faith  is  beyond 
human   conception. 

The  Church  would  be  transfigured  if  she  could, 
by  a  corporate  faith,  stand  upon  the  mount  of 
God,  and  see  him  working  here  and  now  only  for 
the  delight  and  joy  of  all  his  creatures.  With  new 
dignity,  which  would  invest  her  with  raiment  white 
and  glistering,  she  would  then  with  authority  teach 
that  man  must  love  God  with  all  his  powers  and 
his  neighbour  as  himself,  and  make  no  compromise 
with  the  lower  life  of  self  or  party  interest.  It  is 
open  to  every  man  to  accept  Adam's  curse,  to 
sweat  for  mere  bread,  to  set  before  himself  material 
pleasures  as  an  end :    it  is  within  his    power,  by 


chap,  in  THE    USE    OF    PAIN  117 

giving  his  chief  effort  to  it,  to  create  material 
gains,  to  make  bread  even  out  of  stones;  again,  it 
is  open  to  every  man  to  live  for  personal  ambition, 
to  live  for  the  sake  of  possessing  the  kingdoms  of 
this  world,  however  small  or  large  his  world  may 
be  —  a  life  so  given  is  the  worship  of  the  prince  of 
the  world.  Or  it  is  open  to  every  man  to  attempt 
an  ascetic  religion  in  defiance  of  the  law  that 
body  conditions  soul,  to  attempt  to  transcend  the 
physical  conditions  of  spiritual  life  under  which 
God  has  placed  him;  by  so  doing  he  will  attain 
to  some  eminence,  some  temple  minaret,  and  fall 
therefrom. 

There  will  always  be  some  extreme  hour  for 
the  true  Christian  when  he  will  passionately  pray 
that  the  renunciation  of  self-interest  so  terrible  to 
him,  and  necessarily  so  painful  to  God,  may  in 
some  way  be  avoided  without  dishonour.  No 
man  in  the  midst  of  the  world  can  ever  be  assured 
that,  in  the  complex  working  of  human  hearts,  it 
may  not  be  open  to  God  to  give  a  happy  issue  out 
of  menacing  afflictions;  yet  —  this  is  what  all  the 
prophets  have  spoken  —  every  true  seer  in  the  long 
search  of  the  race  for  God  has  said  clearly  that 
when  God  does  not  make  a  way,  man  must  make 
none  by  compromise  with  the  spirit  of  self-interest, 
by  withdrawing  from  the  warfare.  If  an  earthly 
king,  being  evil,  desires  for  every  soldier  under 
his  banners  a  painless  and  honourable  path  to  the 
joy  of  victory,  how  much  more  God !  Yet  as  the 
most  tender  human  heart  will  desire  for  its  dearest, 
peace  only  with  honour,  victory  at  whatever  cost, 
so  must  God. 


n8  THE   FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

It  will  be  said  that  the  difference  is  recondite; 
that  if  exhaustion  and  wounds  and  death  are  God's 
will  for  the  Christian  in  the  same  sense  as  they  are 
the  will  of  a  king  for  his  soldiers;  as  long  as  there 
must  be  in  the  crisis  the  clash  between  God's 
desire  and  his  servant's  —  as  to  time  and  method 
if  not  as  to  end  —  the  distinction  between  God's 
infliction  of  suffering  and  his  preference  of  suffer- 
ing to  moral  defeat  matters  nothing. 

Just  so  the  ancient  Israelite,  as  we  see  from  his 
literature,  regarded  as  recondite  the  question 
whether  God  was  the  author  of  all  thought,  will, 
and  spiritual  activity  —  of  fury  as  of  love,  of  guile 
as  of  truth  —  or  only  the  author  of  good.  Yet  the 
recognition  of  the  difference  marked  the  parting 
of  the  ways  for  progress  or  decadence ;  for  man's 
definition  of  God's  character  is  his  faith.  We  see 
that  just  in  so  far  as  any  ancient  race  found  God 
to  be  antagonistic  to  moral  evil  they  rose  above 
all  adversity,  and  reigned  by  giving  laws  to  their 
conquerors  and  ethical  ideals  to  the  future. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  difficult  to  believe  that,  if 
we  accept  the  teaching  of  Christ  that  God  seeks  to 
save  all  men  from  suffering  as  from  sin,  we  shall 
rise  again  in  the  scale.  The  war  against  all  suffer- 
ing will  become  as  sacred  as  the  war  against  sin. 
While  in  the  whole  earth  any  man  suffers  wrong 
from  his  fellows,  or  languishes  for  lack  of  scientific 
light  and  human  love  and  Christ's  salvation,  the 
idea  of  planning  life  to  attain  personal  fortune  or 
honour  or  excellence  will  be  felt  incompatible 
with  the  Christian  profession. 


CHAPTER   IV 

FATALISM   AND   ASCETICISM 

The  following  considerations  will  go  to  show  that 
the  fatalistic  belief  that  all  suffering  is  God's  will 
is  not  only  a  relic  of  a  past  and  lower  stage  of 
thought,  which  indeed  was  brought  to  greatest 
perfection  in  the  fatalism  of  the  Hindoo  and  the 
Mahommedan,  but  that  while  we  hold  it  we 
cannot  have  the  best  inspiration  that  Christianity 
can  give;  further,  that  the  desire  to  suffer  is  not 
necessary  to  resignation,  nor  is  asceticism  necessary 
to  the  discipline  of  effort. 

The  following  quotations  from  modern  writers 
give  what  we  all  recognise  as  the  common  notions 
of  Christendom  concerning  God's  dealing  with  men. 

"All  the  manifold  trials  with  which  God  visits 
us  are  with  a  view  to  this  perfect  purification  of 
the  soul.  Such  trials  are  needful  —  for  in  no  other 
way  can  we  cast  aside  self;  but  they  are  hard  to 
bear  —  unbearable,  indeed,  unless  we  give  ourselves 
up  passively  to  God,  who  will  sustain  us.  Such 
trials  are  more  profitable  to  God's  glory  and  the 
soul's  salvation  than  the  longest  life  of  good  works 
and  religious  exercises. "  x 

1  From  The  Hidden  Life  of  the  Soul,  adapted  from  the  French 
of  Jean  Nicolas  Grou. 

119 


120  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

"Let  the  afflictions  I  meet  with  be  in  some 
measure  serviceable  toward  the  appeasing  of  thy 
wrath."  x 

"I  know,  O  my  God,  Thou  sendest  this  sick- 
ness on  me  for  my  good,  even  to  humble  and 
reform  me;  O  grant  it  may  work  that  saving 
effect  in  me."  2 

"When  thou  findest  thyself  visited  with  sick- 
ness ...  let  thy  first  care  be,  to  find  out  what 
it  is  that  provokes  him  to  smite  thee."3 

"Whatever  your  sickness  is,  know  you  cer- 
tainly that  it  is   God's  visitation." 4 

This  teaching  represents  the  forces  of  God  as 
warring  among  themselves.  Any  young  man 
setting  forth  on  a  career  of  sport  or  athletics  or 
on  some  warlike  expedition  or  scientific  quest,  has 
a  mind  cheerfully  attuned  to  the  inevitable  hard- 
ships of  his  course.  If  his  aim  be  scientific  truth 
he  does  not  think  of  truth  as  making  his  way 
arduous,  or  as  being  any  the  truer  when  attained 
because  of  the  pains  of  attainment;  nor  does  a 
man  think  of  his  wounds  in  warfare  as  inflicted  by 
the  king  he  serves.  Considering  the  difficulties 
only  as  obstacles  to  be  overcome,  his  attention  is 
not  diverted  or  his  force  diminished  by  them. 
Obstacles,  as  obstacles,  are  for  the  purpose  in 
hand  purely  evil;  and  to  regard  them  thus  is 
necessary  to  the  condition  of  mind  typified  by  the 
single    eye,    and    necessary    to    the    attainment  of 

1  Bishop  Wilson,  Sacra  Privata,  p.  64. 
2  Bishop  Ken,  Manual  (for  Winchester  boys),  p.  120. 
3  Whole  Duty  of  Man  (17th  century),  p.  447. 
4  Exhortation  to  the  Sick,  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 


ch.  iv    FATALISM   AND   ASCETICISM     121 

success,  earthly  or  heavenly.  Consider  how  the 
force  of  a  young  warrior  would  be  diminished  in 
the  service  of  a  king  if  he  regarded  all  the  trials 
and  misfortunes  of  his  march  and  warfare  as  of 
his  king's  planning  or  infliction.  Consider  how 
doubtful  a  man  would  be  of  the  advantage  of 
reaching  scientific  truth  if  he  could  personify 
knowledge,  and  conceive  her  as  guarding  all 
approach  to  her  glorious  precincts  with  a  rod. 
To  most  men  an  underlying  inconsistency  in 
religious  thought  is  the  great  deterrent,  although 
they  may  be  unaware  of  the  cause  of  repulsion. 
The  enthusiast  easily  leaps  over  it;  the  criminal  is 
sunk  below  any  perception  of  it;  but  for  the 
mass  of  men,  although  the  sense  of  inconsistency 
is  usually  quite  inarticulate,  its  baneful  effect  is 
none  the  less  there.  It  is  when  the  deep  under- 
lying uneasiness  finds  words  of  protest  that  men 
begin  to  struggle  out  from  under  the  burden,  and 
their  activities  are  set  free  even  though  their  minds 
are  not  able  to  cope  adequately  with  the  problem  — 
as,  for  instance,  in  the  notable  case  of  "Christian 
Science."  1 

So  much  emphasis  has  been  laid  on  suffering  as 
a  chief  part  of  the  "good  news"  of  God  as  set 
forth  by  "orthodoxy,"  that  the  message  has  little 
attraction  for  the  happy.  Within  the  very  limited 
power  of  expression  given  to  any  human  artist  he 
has  the  choice  of  two  ways  by  which  to  make  light 
in  his  picture  —  by  giving  greater  radiance  to  the 

1  The  writer  has  no  first-hand  acquaintance  with  "Christian 
Science,"  and  has  seen  only  portions  of  its  literature.  See  Ap- 
pendix B. 


122  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

lighter  parts,  or  by  intensifying  the  shadow.  If 
the  shadows  are  made  dark  enough,  a  compara- 
tively muddy  and  dingy  colour  can,  by  contrast  with 
them,  be  made  to  appear  high  light.  This  is  very 
much  the  way  in  which  Christendom,  in  many  times 
and  places,  has  endeavoured  to  set  forth  the  attrac- 
tions of  the  gospel.  What  has  been  preached  has 
not  been  a  doctrine  which  the  plain  man  would 
recognise  in  his  everyday  life  as  the  "good  news" 
of  God;  the  effort  to  convert  him  to  the  belief 
that  it  is  "good  news"  has  too  often  taken  the 
form  of  blackening  the  evil  fate  from  which  it 
offers  an  escape.  God's  providence,  the  judg- 
ment, and  the  hereafter,  have  been  painted  with  a 
brush  dipped  in  a  darkness  which  made  itself  felt. 
Against  this  tendency  there  has  always  been  the 
quiet  influence  of  our  Lord's  words,  "If  ye  then, 
being  evil,  know  how  ye  would  deal  with  your 
children,  how  much  better  a  father  must  God  be 
to  you  than  you  are  to  them."  This  leaven  of 
the  kingdom  has  always  worked,  giving  happier 
views  of  God's  providence  in  this  world  and  the 
next.  A  large  response  to  these  happier  views  in 
the  heart  of  the  common  man  to-day,  vague  and 
incoherent  enough  in  itself,  has  undoubtedly 
sufficed  to  turn  him  from  Christianity  as  it  is 
commonly  taught. 

Does  the  fault  lie  with  the  men  who  thus  turn 
from  the  Church  ?  The  depth  of  a  man's  character 
and  his  mental  grasp  may  be  measured  by  the 
strength  of  his  conviction  that  he  is  evil,  but  not 
by  the  belief  that  God  will  administer  grief  to 
him.     The  first  conviction  is  based  on  the  failure 


ch.  iv    FATALISM   AND    ASCETICISM     123 

that  attends  his  efforts  to  be  good.  What  spoils 
his  success  in  being  good  he  calls  evil.  The  loftier 
his  ideal  of  good,  the  more  earnest  his  desire  to 
attain  it,  the  more  clearly  he  sees  that  evil  is 
present  with  him;  the  remembrance  of  it  in  his 
past  is  grievous;  its  present  tyranny  seems  in- 
tolerable. This  is  a  rational  attitude  toward  a 
fact  of  which  he  has  some  knowledge.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  only  by  faith  that  he  can  see 
God;  his  belief  concerning  God's  attitude  toward 
the  evil  in  human  nature  must  be  only  an  inference 
based  on  his  faith  about  God;  and  to  believe  in 
God's  fatherhood  and  attribute  to  him  actions 
toward  man  in  this  life  which  we  should  call  cruel 
in  a  father  does  not  appear  to  argue  depth  of 
feeling  or  clearness  of  thought.  Man's  only  hope 
of  happiness  in  the  next  life  rests  upon  God's 
character;  if  God's  will  for  him  in  this  life  is 
direful,  hope  is  inconsistent. 

If  the  gospel  of  Christ  does  not  offer  to  the 
common,  happy  man  in  the  common,  happy  street 
something  that  arouses  his  desire  as  soon  as  his 
attention  is  fixed  upon  it,  it  cannot  rightly  be 
called  "the  good  news  of  God."  Evil  thoughts 
may  quickly  dissipate  the  impression;  the  cares 
either  of  poverty  or  riches  may  choke  it ;  his  own 
lack  of  persistence  in  desiring  anything  may  wither 
this  desire ;  yet  if  it  be  good  news  indeed  it  must 
attract  him  naturally  and  simply,  without  any 
dogmatist  at  his  elbow  to  change  the  aspect  of  his 
past  and  future  life,  of  earth  and  hell  and  heaven, 
before  he  recognises  it  as  good.  It  is  the  goodness 
of  the   news  that  must   itself  work  the   required 


i24  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

change  in  him.  He  who,  having  heard  of  some- 
thing he  wants  more  than  anything  he  has, 
relinquishes  his  evil  thoughts,  his  worldly  ideas,  or 
overcomes  his  own  shallowness,  sufficiently  to  make 
it  his  own,  must  make  many  discoveries  as  to  the 
inner  nature  of  sin  and  self.  The  good  fruit, 
indeed,  which  is  the  result  of  his  reception  of  the 
news  can  only  be  borne  at  the  expense  of  his  sins, 
by  choking  them  at  the  root,  a  process  which  is 
accompanied  by  a  new  knowledge  of  sin  and 
righteousness  and  judgment. 

But  at  the  first  hearing  the  heart  of  the  common 
man,  however  indifferent  to  all  things  classed  as 
"religious,"  will  answer  to  the  delight  of  "good 
news";  and  the  reason  that  he  is,  and  has  been, 
so  largely  left  without  the  gospel  of  Christ  is  that 
what  appears  bright  against  the  violent  shadows 
of  the  theologian  is  not  bright  in  contrast  to  the 
common  sunshine  of  daily  life.  But  even  the 
theologians  begin  to  mistrust  the  shadows;  the 
common  man  frankly  disowns  them.  That  exal- 
tation of  suffering  as  the  way  of  life  which  was 
increasingly  emphasised  in  the  interpretation  given 
to  Christianity  by  the  world  of  the  first  Christian 
centuries  —  an  emphasis  which  culminated  in  the 
mediaeval  Church  and  has  since  decreased — will  win 
the  world  less  and  less  as  the  conditions  of  life 
improve  by  the  very  practice  of  Christianity. 
The  Pauline  doctrine  of  chastisement  emphasised  in 
the  cloister,  and  in  every  puritan  revival,  to  the 
exclusion  of  natural  joy,  has  laid  upon  the  mass  of 
men  a  burden  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  —  the  service 
of  a  God  who  wars  against  his  own  armies.     God 


ch.  iv     FATALISM   AND    ASCETICISM     125 

is  represented  as  the  agent  in  every  untoward 
accident,  disabling  and  dismembering  those  who 
seek  to  do  him  the  best  service.  What  can  be 
expected  of  men  but  half-hearted  service  to  such  a 
king  ?  Such  actions  on  the  part  of  God  required 
explanation,  and  all  the  sophistries  of  which 
theology  is  capable  have  been  required  to  explain 
that  God  was  indeed  doing  better  for  them  in  this 
way  than  if  his  kingdom  did  not  appear  to  be 
divided  against  itself. 

This  explanation  can  only  satisfy  three  classes; 
first,  those  who,  having  hold  of  God's  hand  by  the 
direct  simplicity  and  purity  of  their  character, 
receive  direct  from  him  a  higher  truth,  so  word- 
less that  it  does  not  conflict  with  the  letter  of  any 
doctrine  or  concern  itself  with  the  letter  of  any; 
secondly,  those  who  are  prepared  to  set  aside  the 
whole  physical  aspect  of  life,  and  live  in  an 
imaginative  world  that  they  think  to  be  purely 
spiritual;  or  thirdly,  the  large  class  of  mind  whose 
mental  (not  physical)  indolence  and  pious  sentiment 
finds  its  easiest  outlet  in  fatalism. 

The  reason  why  fatalism  is  often  credited  with 
a  high  character  is  because  people  attribute  to  it 
the  courage  and  patience  and  resolute  activities  of 
the  fatalist.  That  these  are  often  dauntless  is  due 
rather  to  the  fact  that  fatalism  numbs  all  reasonable 
doubt,  lifts  religion  into  an  unpractical  sphere,  and 
sets  man's  activities  free  from  the  embarrassment 
of  scruple,  as  we  see  them  for  the  most  part  free 
in  healthy  childhood  or  unreflecting  youth.  What 
reflection  the  fatalist  does  exercise  is  restful  rather 
than  a  drain  upon  his  other  activities  of  thought 


i26  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

and  body.  He  is  naturally  more  successful  in  his 
enterprise,  or  more  patient  under  failure,  than  any 
man  who  is  trying  to  reconcile  an  active  reason  with 
the  inconsistencies  of  a  religion  which  he  believes 
ought  to  be  the  motive  and  guide  of  every  activity. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  believe  that  all  suffering 
is  of  God's  direct  intention  in  order  to  exalt  the 
great  virtue  of  resignation.  A  man's  fidelity  to 
God  must  be  measured  by  his  resignation  to  the 
divine  will  in  all  things  which  conflict  with  his 
own  desire  while  they  belong  to  God's  scheme  for 
the  building  up  of  free  virtue,  just  as  he  resigns 
himself  to  the  pains,  privations,  and  fatigues  of  a 
hard  enterprise  which  he  must  pursue;  but  a 
man's  fidelity  to  God  is  not  measured  by  resignation 
to  evil  that  conflicts  both  with  his  own  desire  and 
also  with  God's  will.  If,  for  example,  all  the  sick 
folk  mentioned  in  the  Gospels  had  resigned  them- 
selves to  their  condition,  had  not  clamoured  for 
the  attention  of  Jesus,  impeding  his  progress  and 
interrupting  his  teaching,  Christians  believe  that 
God's  work  would  have  been  checked,  the  kingdom 
retarded,  not  advanced.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
every  Christian  throughout  the  ages,  claiming  the 
gifts  God  offers  to  faith,  had  resigned  himself  to 
that  degree  of  wordly  failure  which  uncompromis- 
ing obedience  to  the  ideal  of  Christ  must  involve, 
the  salt  of  the  earth  would  not,  so  far,  have  lost  its 
saltness.  "The  devil"  is  probably  a  fatalist;  he 
certainly  will  advance  his  kingdom  furthest  by 
persuading  the  saints  to  acquiesce  in  what  is  not 
God's  will,  thus  making  them  feel  incapable  of 
doing  what  is. 


ch.  iv    FATALISM   AND    ASCETICISM     127 

The  man  who  can  regard  God  as  living  apart 
in  the  region  of  necessity  or  fate;    the  man  who 
can  regard  this  earth  life  as  a  factor  which  can  be 
set  aside  as  almost  negligible  in  his  estimate  of 
existence;  the  man  who  sees  God  face  to  face,  and 
needs  no  reasonable  account  of  the  divine  love  — 
these    may   thrive    upon    any    doctrine    of  divine 
providence.     But  they  are  few  among  the  masses 
whom  Jesus  came  to  save;    and  from  under  this 
horrid  incubus  —  the  idea  of  a  God  who  is  for  ever 
afflicting  those  he  loves  best  —  we  see  the  modern 
spirit  struggling  out  in  several  directions.     There 
is  the  great  protest  of  pure  materialism,  "Better 
no  God  than  one  who  is  worse  than  an  earthly 
father";   and  this  sets  free  natural  activities  which 
perhaps  are  upborne  by  the  divine  mind  more  truly 
than  are  the  austerities  of  the  enthusiast.     There 
is   the   great   protest   of  agnosticism,   "Better   an 
unknown  God  than  one  inconsistent  with  reason." 
And  this  again  sets  free  in  the  best  men  activities 
of  speculation   and   worship   which   are,  perhaps, 
emboldened    by   the   vital   force   from   the   divine 
heart   as   any  theology  coarsened   by  the  world's 
applause  can  never  be.     And  there  is  the  recent 
doctrine  of  "Christian  Science,"  a  mad  philosophy 
but  apparently  a  true  worship,  honouring  certain 
abstractions   from   the   Christian   idea,  which   are 
false  only  because  they  are  abstractions,  and  have 
been  abstracted  from  the  concrete  Christian  faith 
because  a  large  part  of  the  Church  had  previously 
contented  herself  with  other  abstractions  more  false 
and  vain. 

Further,   to   maintain   that   suffering   has   been 


i28  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

exalted  in  religious  thought  to  a  false  honour  is 
not  to  deny  that  pain,  disappointment,  and  con- 
tradiction are  the  only  field  in  which  we  know 
effort,  and  that  the  discipline  of  effort  is  salutary 
in  the  moral  as  in  the  physical  life.  Every  young 
animal,  in  order  to  satisfy  its  hunger  and  thirst, 
its  curiosity  and  inborn  activity,  will  clamber 
painfully  over  the  most  difficult  obstacles  to  attain 
something  it  has  in  view;  its  falls,  its  quarrels 
with  its  fellows,  the  disappointment  of  not  reaching 
what  has  attracted  it,  or  finding  it  when  reached, 
less  desirable  than  appeared  —  these  are  the  evil 
sufficient  for  the  day  which  makes  it  more  sturdy 
and  more  wise  on  the  morrow.  The  child  that  is 
not  seeking  to  do  something  a  little  beyond  its 
strength  and  wit,  falling  and  failing,  disputing 
with  men  and  circumstances  its  right  to  success,  is 
not  —  at  six  months  or  at  twenty  years  —  a  growing 
child;  and  furthermore,  is  not  a  happy  child. 
And  when,  after  threescore  years  and  ten,  he 
begins  to  cease  all  effort  and  turn  aside  from  all 
discussion,  we  sadly  say,  "He  is  ageing  fast;" 
and  life  is  practically  over  as  soon  as  the  effort  to 
reach  what  is  beyond  reach,  with  the  pains  and 
disappointments  and  contradictions  necessary  to 
effort  and  uncertainty,  have  ceased.  What  we 
need  most  carefully  to  mark  is  that  with  the 
cessation  of  effort  comes  the  cessation  of  joy. 
This  knowledge,  that  the  discipline  of  effort  is  the 
law  of  life  as  we  know  it,  affects  our  idea  of  all 
delight  as  much  as  our  idea  of  pain,  our  idea  of 
heaven  as  well  as  of  hell.  We  look  forward  in 
another  life,  not  to  rest  but  to  less  friction,  not  to 


ch.  iv     FATALISM    AND    ASCETICISM     129 

any  j°y  in  the  feeling  that  there  are  no  new  worlds 
to  conquer,  but  to  the  joy  of  eternal  conquest; 
and  the  ideas  of  power  without  expenditure,  of 
movement  without  friction,  are  not  now  possible 
to  our  reasoning  powers,  so  that  we  regard  the 
discipline  which  attends  effort  as  quite  as  much 
necessary  for  delight  as  for  development. 

Many  place  a  high  value  upon  what  they  think 
to  be  asceticism  without  taking  pains  to  distinguish 
it  from  other  principles  of  action.  To  choose  any 
course  which  involves  hardship  and  self-denial  for 
the  sake  of  accomplishing  some  end  which  is 
counted  worth  the  cost,  is  not  asceticism  unless, 
when  the  end  is  the  development  of  a  man's  own 
character,  the  hardship  chosen  be  some  form  of 
discipline  which  will  keep  the  body  in  subjection. 

For  example,  he  who,  for  the  sake  of  supporting 
some  relative,  or  in  order  to  obtain  a  position,  or 
to  be  able  to  marry,  chooses  a  meagre  and  toilsome 
life,  is  not  an  ascetic.  Neither  is  he  an  ascetic  if 
he  choose  the  same  life  in  the  missionary  spirit, 
for  the  sake  of  bestowing  spiritual  wealth  upon 
others.  A  man  who  sells  all  he  has  to  buy  a  pearl 
or  a  field,  or  to  further  the  interests  of  a  kingdom 
that  claims  his  loyalty,  is  not  an  ascetic. 

If,  however,  the  man  who  sold  all  he  had  for 
the  sake  of  gaining  something  he  desired  more, 
should  think  that  the  poverty  or  inconvenience 
that  he  suffered  was  to  be  courted  for  the  sake  of 
enhancing  his  own  fitness  to  receive  the  treasure, 
or  because  such  suffering  was  pleasing  to  some 
invisible  power,  the  element  of  asceticism  would 
enter   into   what   he   did.     A   man   who   gives  up 


130  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

eating  meat  one  day  in  the  week  because  he  thinks, 
or  those  he  chooses  to  obey  think,  that  his  body 
will  thereby  become  stronger,  and  on  the  whole, 
more  healthy  and  therefore  more  useful  to  himself 
and  to  God,  is  not  an  ascetic.  But  if  he  fast  on 
Friday,  believing  that  physical  inconvenience  is  the 
best  method  of  bringing  his  body  into  subjection 
to  his  will  and  so  making  it  more  useful  to  himself 
and  to  God,  he  is  an  ascetic.  Asceticism  lies  in 
the  belief  that  there  is  some  moral  advantage  to 
be  gained  by  the  mere  endurance  of  suffering,  and 
in  the  habit  of  courting  for  that  end  suffering 
which  has  no  other  end.  Two  men  may  act  in 
precisely  the  same  way,  one  an  ascetic,  the  other  a 
free  man  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ.  The  difference 
does  not  depend  on  whether  a  man  consider  a 
moral  advantage  worth  purchasing  at  the  cost  of  a 
physical  disadvantage;  but  on  whether  he  consider 
the  courting  of  physical  disadvantage  the  true  way 
to  gain  moral  advantage. 

There  can  surely  be  no  doubt  that  Jesus  taught 
that  his  followers  must  choose  all  the  self-denial 
and  loss  that  is  involved  for  any  man  in  making 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  its  interests  and  its 
benefits,  the  first  object  of  desire  and  effort.  The 
end  for  each  man  is  union  with  God;  the  means 
to  that  end  is  union  with  man.  The  kingdom 
was  the  aggregate  of  those  who  lived  by  this  means 
to  this  end.  But  the  joy  of  the  end  and  the 
joy  of  the  means  was  to  swallow  up  all  incidental 
loss  and  pain.  We  are  all  familiar  with  that  de- 
scription of  the  life  of  Jesus,  "who  for  the  joy  that 
was  set  before  him  endured  the  cross,  despising 


ch.  iv    FATALISM   AND    ASCETICISM     131 

the  shame."  The  spirit  in  these  words  is  very 
different  from  the  spirit  that  courts  pain  and 
shame  for  the  private  benefit  of  character.  In  the 
parables  of  the  kingdom,  in  the  precepts  concern- 
ing life  in  the  kingdom,  what  is  given  or  done  to. 
obtain  the  end  in  view  is  incidental,  and  the  mind, 
fixed  on  the  joy  of  its  motive,  is  filled  with  images 
of  gain  and  gladness  rather  than  with  images  of 
privation  and  pain.  The  glow  of  enterprise,  the 
flush  of  effort,  the  buoyancy  of  hope,  and  the 
strenuous  faith  which  grasps  the  substance  hoped 
for  and  tastes  the  delight  of  what  is  as  yet  unseen, 
all  combine  to  build  up  the  moral  character  of  the 
child  of  the  kingdom.  It  is  true  that  he  also 
gains  all  the  moral  benefit  that  loss  can  give;  but, 
instead  of  seeking  loss,  he  spurns  with  the  sole  of 
his  foot  each  hardship  by  which  he  rises.  We  can 
see  him  on  his  mountain  path,  footsore,  climbing 
up  from  crag  to  crag;  the  sharp  rocks  are  his 
natural  sorrows;  the  sweet  air  he  breathes,  the 
sweet  fruits  on  which  he  feeds,  are  his  simple 
earthly  goods,  and  are  as  essential  to  his  progress 
as  the  rough  road  on  which  he  treads.  But  his 
mind,  in  harmony  with  his  heavenly  calling,  dwells 
on  the  beauty  and  comforts  of  the  pathway 
because  they  are  the  direct  gifts  of  his  God  whose 
love  lures  him  on.  He  has  no  need  to  seek  to 
wound  his  feet;  inspired  by  God,  he  takes  the 
quickest  path,  however  rough,  and  hardly  under- 
stands that  the  blood  upon  the  pathway  is 
his  own. 


CHAPTER  V 

PROPHETS    AND    APOSTLES 

We  may,  by  analogy,  briefly  outline  the  change 
that  has  come  over  the  minds  of  Christian  thinkers 
with  regard  to  the  authority  of  the  lawgivers  and 
prophets  of  Israel,  and  also  of  the  apostles. 

It  is  not  uncommon  for  young  children  to  be 
trained,  by  precept  of  mother  and  nurse,  to  regard 
their  father  as  an  infallible  authority  and  example. 
Sturdy  intelligent  boys,  pushing  beyond  the  nursery, 
are  bound  to  perceive  that  their  ideals  of  justice, 
mercy,  and  common  sense  do  not  always  tally  with 
the  parental  word  and  character.  Here  the  father 
said  something  that  was  not  quite  accurate,  there 
he  showed  temper;  and  such  instances,  even  if 
exceptional,  are  remembered  when  the  father's 
discipline  is  not  to  their  taste.  The  first  workings 
of  such  observations  do  not,  in  fact  cannot,  over- 
throw the  dogma  of  the  father's  infallibility  so 
early,  and  perhaps  wisely,  implanted.  The  result 
is  rebellion  against  the  infallible  standard.  Anarchy 
reigns  in  the  heart  of  the  son,  and  in  many  a  case 
carries  him  beyond  the  influence  of  the  domestic 
circle  into  a  world  where,  without  guiding  principle, 


chap,  v     PROPHETS    AND    APOSTLES      133 

he  too  often  loses  his  way.  But,  perhaps  in  many 
more  cases,  what  happens  is  this :  growing  older, 
going  to  school  and  returning,  the  boy  forgets 
the  nursery  dogma;  his  father  appears  to  him  as 
a  man  among  men;  then  how  gladly  does  he 
recognise  all  that  is  good  in  his  father's  heart, 
all  that  is  wise  in  his  judgment,  all  that  is  true  in 
his  principles  !  We  cannot  stay  here  to  inquire 
how  a  boy  obtains  a  standard  by  which  to  judge 
what  in  his  father  is  worthy  of  imitation  and  what 
is  not;  it  remains  a  fact  that  he  does  judge. 
A  boy  may  make  mistakes,  but  the  moral  sense 
within  and  the  common  sense  of  the  community 
without,  make  such  judgment  inevitable  to  a 
growing  intellect.  The  father  now  has  a  deeper 
influence  over  the  growing  man  than  he  could  ever 
have  had  if  seen  in  a  false  light,  even  had  the  son 
rendered  unreasoning  obedience  all  his  life,  because 
the  father's  influence  now  extends  beyond  action 
and  mechanical  thought  to  the  springs  of  spon- 
taneous thought  and  action. 

Such  is,  in  some  sort,  now  the  influence  which 
the  lives  and  opinions  of  prophets  and  apostles 
have  over  the  thinking  Christian,  who  says  that 
the  Old  Testament  is  not  so  much  an  inspired 
record  as  a  wonderfully  candid  record  of  the  lives, 
the  opinions,  and  the  worship,  of  men  inspired  by 
that  hunger  and  thirst  for  righteousness  which 
cannot  fail  of  its  desire,  and  with  that  purity  of 
heart  which  sees  God.  Their  age  was  not  infallible, 
and  they  were  men  of  their  age.  The  same  must 
be  said  of  the  writers  of  the  Gospels  and  Epistles ; 
the  test  of  the  quality  of  their  inspiration  is  the 


i34  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

higher  life  and  higher  faith  which  they  actually  did 
implant  in  the  world. 

Why,  then,  do  we  believe  in  the  infallibility  of 
Jesus  ?  The  assurance  of  that  central  Christian 
faith  rests  upon  the  intuitive  knowledge  which  his 
servants  daily  have  of  him,  and  which  is  incom- 
municable by  argument.  It  is  like  the  oil  in  the 
lamp  of  the  wedding  guest,  which  cannot  be 
transferred  to  the  lamp  which  another  carries,  and 
can  only  be  known  to  others  by  its  light.  We 
cannot  too  clearly  bear  in  mind  that  all  on  the 
side  of  reason  that  is  essential  to  the  intuitive  faith 
of  any  Christian  is  that  his  own  reason  should  not 
contradict  it;  so  that  all  strife  of  tongues  concern- 
ing Christian  dogmas  are,  beyond  that,  irrelevant 
to  the  central  Christian  belief.  At  the  same  time 
this  intuitive  knowledge  can  be  buttressed  by  any 
argument  that  seems  reasonable  to  its  possessor. 
If  the  possessor  be  a  well-informed  and  thinking 
person,  what  appears  reasonable  to  him  will  have 
a  certain  force  with  other  thinking  persons;  and 
with  regard  to  the  different  position  which  Jesus 
occupies  in  religious  history  compared  with  pro- 
phets and  apostles,  we  would  note  two  lines  of 
thought  and  research  which  commend  themselves. 

The  first  is  that,  taking  the  world  over  and  the 
length  of  ages,  all  that  we  find  of  new  life,  new 
thought,  and  new  impulse  in  the  early  Christian 
Church  must  be  set  down  to  a  new  cause,  and  in 
so  far  as  it  corresponds  with  the  life  of  Jesus  told 
in  the  Gospels  it  is  only  reasonable  to  regard  his 
inspiration  as  the  cause.  It  is  almost  superfluous 
now   to   remark   that   the   religious   thought   and 


chap,  v     PROPHETS    AND   APOSTLES      135 

moral  activities  of  the  Gentile  nations  were,  in  the 
ancient  world,  and  are  now,  on  a  much  higher 
plane  than  Christian  apologists  used  to  suppose; 
but  granting  all  of  good  that  can  be  ascribed  to 
them  and  to  the  pious  Jews  of  the  Christian  era, 
there  is  in  the  early  Church,  and  in  its  effect  upon 
its  environment,  evidence  of  an  impulse  of  joyful 
love  and  a  new  estimate  of  God  which  can  be 
most  reasonably  accounted  for  by  assuming  the 
substantial  truth  of  the  Gospel  record.  Joy  was 
the  most  novel  feature  of  the  new  faith;  no 
adequate  cause  but  the  truth  of  the  Gospel  story 
can  be  assumed  for  it. 

The  second  consideration  which  makes  it  the 
more  reasonable  to  regard  Jesus  as  holding  some 
unique  place  among  mystics,  among  lawgivers, 
among  poets,  and  among  practical  reformers,  as 
having  an  inspiration  which  raised  him  above  his 
fellow-men  in  all  these  capacities,  is  that  disciples, 
obviously  incapable  of  understanding  all  that 
they  transmitted,  of  grasping  more  than  a  small 
part  of  the  force  of  what  they  transmitted,  did 
none  the  less  transmit  it  in  a  form  such  that  every 
progressive  generation  has  been  able  to  assimilate 
from  that  form  more  and  more  of  what  is  godlike. 
To-day  we  find  in  the  life  of  Jesus  truths  which 
prove  to  be  the  solution  of  national  and  social 
problems,  and  of  the  problems  of  every  individual 
heart.  To  say  this  is  not  to  assert  that  the  theology 
of  the  Christian  Church  at  any  one  period  solves 
these  problems,  still  less  that  the  conception  of 
Christianity  in  the  minds  of  those  who  reject  it  is 
a  conception  that  helps  to  such  solution.   Christian 


136  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

theology  in  every  age  has  stood  to  the  message 
of  Jesus  as  the  partial  conceptions  of  the  first 
disciples  stood  to  it.  The  great  Christian  miracle 
is  that  through  this  shifting  but  perennial  mis- 
conception a  Christ  is  still  seen,  is,  as  we  believe 
the  progress  of  the  world  proves,  increasingly 
understood,  and  can  be  grasped  by  faith  which  in 
operation  accomplishes  the  highest  human  ends. 
This  is  a  strong  argument  for  a  belief  that  does 
not  rest  on  argument. 

But  to  return  to  the  question  of  the  relative 
positions  of  Jesus  and  other  teachers  whose  words 
are  recorded  in  Scripture.  It  seems,  indeed,  extra- 
ordinary that  the  Church  for  many  centuries  has 
taught  that  Jesus  was  "very  God  of  very  God," 
and  yet  held  that  his  life  and  words  did  not  hold 
the  mirror  to  the  character  of  God  the  Father 
more  clearly  than  did  the  lives  and  words  of  his 
own  followers.  We  have  now  a  theoretical  know- 
ledge of  this  mistake;  we  need  to  have  the 
application  of  this  knowledge  enforced.  We  are 
still  slothfully  holding  hard  to  many  conclusions 
arrived  at  by  arguments  of  which  the  equal  in- 
spiration of  all  Scripture  was  the  major  premiss. 
The  premiss  is  lost;  we  have  not  revised  our 
conclusions. 

The  inspiration  of  a  nation  is  seen  in  its  life, 
in  its  gallant  struggle  to  know  God  and  to  do 
righteousness :  the  inspiration  of  an  apostle  is 
shown  in  the  calibre  of  his  missionary  life,  and  in 
the  life  he  implants  in  others.  If  we  were  to 
refuse  to  be  content  until  the  nation  we  represent 
sought  God   as  impetuously  as  did  Israel  under 


chap,  v     PROPHETS    AND   APOSTLES      137 

divine  inspiration,  until  the  inspiration  of  the 
Apostles  was  imparted  to  us  as  individuals  and  our 
lives  bore  the  same  abundant  fruits,  we  should  no 
longer  be  in  danger  of  confusing  the  inspiration  of 
the  Master  with  that  of  some  of  his  disciples ;  and 
should  avoid  the  confusions  of  thought  which  have 
arisen  out  of  the  belief  that  the  doctrine  of  Jesus 
must  be  modified  and  corrected  until  it  correspond 
with  the  interpretation  of  his  forerunners  and 
followers. 

If  we  examine  the  way  in  which  Jesus  treated 
the  prestige  of  the  prophets  and  lawgivers  of  the 
Old  Testament  we  shall  see  that  we  have  his  own 
authority  for  allowing  each  age  to  test  the  inspira- 
tion of  sacred  books  by  the  highest  developments 
of  truth  which  the  corporate  mind  may  then  grasp. 
There  is  plain  evidence  in  history  that  every  law 
or  moral   obligation   that   the   race   has   seriously 
adopted  as  a  way  of  salvation  must  be  worked  out 
with  fear  till  its  every  requirement  —  each  jot  and 
tittle  — has  been  exhaustively  tested,  and  found 
either  useful  or  useless  in  the  attainment  of  the 
highest  ends.     Yet  when  Jesus  says  that  the  law 
shall  not  fail,  that  he  himself  came  to  fulfil  the  law, 
and  that  the  law  is  more  enduring  than  heaven  and 
earth,  it  is  clearly  not  the  laws,  or  even  the  moral 
obligations,  of  Semitic  ceremonial  and  taboo,  and 
the  crude  ethics   attached  to  them,  to  which  he 
refers;    it  is  clearly  the  rightness  of  justice  and 
mercy,  and  their  eternal  synthesis  of  love,  of  which 
he  is  speaking. 

In  speaking  thus  of  the  eternal  right,  what  did 
he  mean  to  teach   about  all  that  mass  of  legal 


138  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

enactments  embedded  in  the  canonical  books  of 
the  Old  Testament,  which  the  Jews  from  whom  he 
sprang,  to  whom  he  spoke,  regarded  as  "the  law"  ? 
If  we  read  those  long  passages  in  the  Pentateuch 
which  deal  with  the  details  of  the  clean  and  unclean 
—  regulations  which  were  not  of  the  Jahveh  reli- 
gion, but  had  come  down  from  Semitic  fathers  of 
the  dim  animistic  past,  like  circumcision,  which  our 
Lord  himself  says  was  not  of  Moses  —  we  must 
see  that  Jesus  could  have  had  no  thought  of  set- 
ting the  seal  of  his  authority  upon  all  this.  It 
seems  clear  that  he  would  teach  that  a  great 
part  of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were 
negligible,  so  certain  to  pass  away  in  the  hearts 
and  minds  of  those  who  entered  into  life  through 
his  life  that  no  argument  concerning  them  was 
necessary. 

If  the  Christian  Church,  by  upholding  the 
authority  of  all  the  canonical  scriptures,  has  deter- 
minedly put  a  new  patch  on  an  old  garment,  the 
ever-increasing  rent  cannot  be  charged  to  Jesus. 
He  who  would  not  in  his  lifetime  pay  heed  to 
ceremonial  rules  which  clashed  with  any  need  of 
human  life,  who  even  neglected  useless  ceremony 
when  no  need  required  the  neglect,  could  not  have 
regarded  pages  devoted  to  such  regulations  as 
having  ever  been  of  divine  inspiration.  How 
gentle  was  his  protestantism  !  He  admits  that  the 
new  doctrine  must  be  a  store  for  the  future,  like 
new  wine  hung  up  in  new  wine-skins  to  gain 
value  by  time ;  his  gentle  excuse  for  the  way  they 
would  for  many  generations  cling  to  the  old 
doctrine    is,    "No    man    having    drunk   old   wine 


chap,  v     PROPHETS    AND    APOSTLES      139 

desireth  new,  for  he  saith,  The  old  is  good." 
"This  ought  ye  to  have  done"  as  long  as  it  seems 
to  you  to  have  divine  authority,  but  not  to  have 
omitted  the  weightier  matters  of  justice  and  mercy. 
He  was  confident  that  he  who  follows  the  guiding 
light  of  these  virtues  will  soon  become  so  absorbed 
in  the  aspect  of  the  divine  character  which  they 
unfold  that  he  will  cease  to  assume  divine  sanction 
for  anything  trivial  or  banal. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  explanation  of  our  Lord's 
attitude  toward  the  written  law  was  that  he  did 
not  consider  it  worth  while  to  publish  destructive 
criticism  of  what  was  necessarily  transitory.  His 
own  definite  attitude  toward  their  doctrine  of  the 
infallibility  of  their  past  teachers  flashes  out  after 
a  discussion  with  the  theologians  at  Jerusalem, 
when  they  had  uttered  again  their  oft-repeated 
taunt,  claiming  the  authority  of  their  holy  records 
against  his  work  —  "Abraham  is  our  father." 
"We  know  that  God  spake  unto  Moses,  as  for 
this  fellow  we  know  not  from  whence  he  is." 
His  reply  is  the  parable  of  the  false  shepherds  and 
the  true.  "All  that  ever  came  before  me  were 
thieves  and  robbers."  There  stand  his  words, 
his  own  explanation  of  the  parable,  as  valid  as 
any  of  the  dear  familiar  words  that  follow.  "I 
am  the  good  shepherd."  "I  am  the  door."  I 
alone  !  It  is  all  poetry,  the  expression  not  only 
of  a  wounded  heart  but  of  a  glowing  imagination, 
and  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  if  the  passage 
teaches  that  in  comparison  with  all  his  forerunners, 
the  law  and  the  prophets,  Jesus  is  the  one  Saviour 
of  his  people,  it  also  teaches  that  in  comparison 


140  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

with  his  authority  the  authority  of  the  law  and 
the  prophets  was  as  nothing. 

Again,  we  have  set  up  the  authority  of  his 
own  disciples  to  modify  and  correct  our  under- 
standing of  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  in  spite  of  our 
knowledge  that  the  greater  a  man  is  the  more 
difficult  it  is  for  him  to  win  a  full  understanding 
from  other  men.  Let  us  begin  with  the  case  of 
a  man  who  is  somewhat  superior  to  his  fellows  in 
power  of  thought  and  expression,  and  also  in 
moral  character.  He  knows  that  his  differing 
aspects  are  understood  by  differing  and  ever- 
widening  circles  of  people.  In  one  aspect  he 
will  be  best  known  by  his  brothers  and  sisters, 
his  wife  and  children.  Whatever  is  personally 
attractive  in  him  will  be  dearest  to  the  hearts  of 
those  nearest  to  him;  these  are  they  who  would 
in  the  first  place  suffer  most  for  his  sake.  But 
such  a  man  is  perfectly  conscious  that  members 
of  this  inner  circle  rarely  understand  his  thoughts : 
whatever  expression  he  gives  to  them  goes  out 
into  the  world,  and  finds  its  best  soil  here  and 
there  in  the  minds  of  comparative  strangers,  who 
are  better  able  to  interpret  his  art  or  doctrine,  or 
whatever  it  be,  than  are  his  nearest  relatives. 
If,  however,  he  is,  as  we  say,  "before  his  age," 
great  enough  to  have  grasped  something  which 
his  generation  has  failed  to  apprehend,  then,  the 
more  certain  he  is  of  the  truth  of  his  vision,  the 
more  he  is  assured  that  it  must  wait  to  win  a  full 
understanding  from  future  generations.  Kepler's 
great  foreword,  that  he  could  well  be  content 
to  wait  for  readers  since  God  had  waited  so  long 


chap,  v     PROPHETS    AND    APOSTLES      141 

for  a  discoverer,  finds  an  echo  in  the  heart  of 
every  one  who  has  in  any  way  studied  the 
phenomena  of  human  genius. 

From  all  this  it  is  evident  that  the  more  we 
exalt  the  character  and  the  message  of  Jesus 
Christ,  the  more  we  must  realise  that  what  is 
true  of  every  man  of  petty  distinction  must  have 
been  true  in  much  greater  measure  of  him. 
To  the  inner  circle  of  his  disciples  was  revealed 
the  highest  degree  of  lovableness  in  human 
personality  that  the  earth  had  seen.  They  loved, 
and  that  was  their  inspiration  —  so  great  an  in- 
spiration that  the  whole  busy  world  has  been 
forced  to  gaze  at  their  master  through  the 
description  wrought  by  their  personal  affection. 
But  these  men  were  not  so  well  fitted  to  grasp 
the  message  of  Jesus  in  its  depth  of  thought,  its 
international  application,  and  its  universal  hope,  as 
were  some  of  those  who  believed  because  of  their 
word.  Of  this  first  outer  circle  St.  Paul  is  the 
magnificent  example;  and  that  very  many  others 
seized  on  the  thoughts  of  Jesus  and  were  seized  by 
them,  is  shown  by  the  rapid  spread  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  in  the  best  forms  in  which  that  age  could 
assimilate  it.  Their  inspiration  was  devotion  to 
the  mind  of  Christ  to  the  utmost  extent  of  their 
power  to  understand  and  teach  it. 

If,  however,  we  are  to  believe  that  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  message  of  Jesus  given  by  St. 
Paul  and  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  and  other  inspired  writers,  was  an 
infallible  interpretation  for  all  time,  we  must 
believe,  either  that  they  were  as  great  in  spiritual 


i42  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

and  intellectual  insight  as  Jesus,  or  were  the 
subjects  of  mechanical  inspiration.  Quite  frankly, 
very  few  of  us  believe  either  of  these  alternatives. 
It  is  more  reasonable  to  suppose  that,  bringing 
as  they  did  the  limitations  of  their  age  to  the 
interpretation  of  the  great  doctrines  of  the  Father 
in  heaven  and  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  they 
veiled  them  with  the  clouds  of  God's  wrath  that, 
for  their  eyes,  hung  in  the  empyrean.  The 
greatest  marvel  of  the  inspiration  of  the  pen  is 
in  the  Gospel  narratives,  which,  notwithstanding 
the  sombre  beliefs  of  the  writers,  show  us  Jesus 
looking  up  into  a  cloudless  heaven. 

All  the  parables  of  the  seeds  show  how  deeply 
Jesus  felt  that  what  he  had  to  impart  could  not 
be  imparted  in  the  form  in  which  it  must  develop. 
Everything  shows  that  he  perceived  that  in 
teaching  his  most  devoted  followers  he  was 
speaking  as  an  adult  to  little  children,  or  rather, 
that  that  simile  dimly  expressed  the  conditions 
under  which  he  laboured.  It  was  only  tran- 
scendent faith  in  the  purpose  of  God  that  gave 
him  the  conviction  that  the  seed  would  grow 
and  that  quickly.  It  is  worth  while  observing 
that  the  seed  to  which  he  likens  the  kingdom, 
or  the  seed  of  the  husbandman  to  whose  action 
he  likens  the  kingdom,  is  the  seed  of  an  annual 
crop.  There  is  no  plant  that  in  the  glory  of  its 
bloom  is  more  ethereal,  more  obviously  transient, 
than  the  oriental  mustard;  there  is  nothing  that 
will  so  certainly  be  mown  down  as  corn.  There 
were  trees  in  Palestine  that  were  symbols  of  what 
was  everlasting,  which  were  as  large  in  proportion 


chap  v     PROPHETS    AND   APOSTLES      143 

to  the  size  of  their  seeds  as  any  annual;  but  they 
were  not  the  figure  chosen,  because  seed  that 
grew  up  into  men  must  obviously  blossom  into 
the  ideas  of  one  generation,  which  could  never  be 
the  precise  ideas  of  the  next;  and  yet,  through 
those  vistas  which  he  sketched,  in  which  nation 
shall  rise  against  nation  and  the  devotees  of 
false  Christs  shall  fill  the  world  with  their  preach- 
ing, he  saw  the  seed  of  the  kingdom  ever  self- 
sown  and  producing  an  ever-increasing  harvest. 
How   swift   and    splendid   was    the    first   crop ! 

St.  Paul  stands  out  prominent.     So  small  a  seed 

perhaps  an  earthly  acquaintance,  perhaps  a  second- 
hand story  — and  how  great  a  Christian,  lifting 
whole  nations  God-ward  in  the  ardour  of  his  heart ! 
Yet  St.  Paul  was  a  Jew,  believing  that  God  had 
required  the  slaughter  of  beasts;   a  Pharisee  of  the 
Pharisees  he  was,  steeped  in  the  idea  of  an  awful, 
far-off,  material  God,  and  a  cruel,  fantastic,  material 
law  by  which  came  condemnation  but  no  forgive- 
ness;  every  tendency  of  his  thought  as  a  Pharisee 
was  darkness  fighting  with  the  light;    a  son  of  the 
later  Greeks  was  he;    from  them  he  had  learned 
that  the  unseen  only  was  real;    a  citizen  of  Rome 
was   he,   and  in  his  mind  the   mailed  hand  was 
the  only  stay  of  justice.     These  strains  were  the 
threads  of  his  thought;    every  image  in  his  fancy 
must    be    embroidered    by    them.     Yet    see    how 
splendid  was  the  work  of  the  salvation  by  joy  in 
him  — the  faith  that  levelled  mountains  of  legalism ; 
the  love  of  God  that  overleaped  his  highest  creed; 
the  glowing  heart  of  friendship   to  man  that  he 
bared  to  the  world  in  the  overflowing  haste  of  his 


i44  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

burning  rhetoric !  We  have  done  our  best  to 
kill  the  living,  loving  marvel  of  a  personality  that 
was  given  for  our  instruction,  by  worshipping  the 
letter  of  his  word.  This  man  would  have  been 
no  help  to  us  as  father  or  brother  if  he  had  been 
a  mere  instrument  of  mechanical  inspiration;  he 
would  have  been  no  man,  but  another  Christ,  if 
he  could  have  comprehended  the  revelation  of  the 
Christ  without  mixing  and  tingeing  it  with  the 
darkness  of  his  age. 

What  was  St.  Paul  to  Jesus  ?  A  lost  sheep, 
on  whose  headstrong  track  he  endured  terrible 
sorrow.  What  was  St.  Paul  to  Jesus  ?  The  lost 
coin  which,  had  he  not  found  it,  would  have  lain 
more  useless  than  a  mere  ornament,  a  coin  out  of 
currency,  an  absolute  economic  waste.  Is  this 
reason  for  exalting  St.  Paul's  opinions  and  ex- 
periences into  a  standard  to  which  his  Lord's 
teaching  must  be  conformed  ?  The  weight  of  St. 
Paul's  opinion  is  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  on  the 
side  of  the  belief  that  suffering  is  God's  chief 
agent  in  man's  salvation;  and  an  arbitrary  exalta- 
tion of  this,  which  was  only  one  phase  of  his 
thought,  has  gone  far  to  obliterate  the  numerous 
passages  in  which  he  glorifies  the  joy  of  the  gos- 
pel. Joy  !  joy  !  joy  !  was  his  war-cry,  although 
he  held  hard  by  the  saving  power  of  pain  which 
was  the  thought  of  his  age.  We,  holding  to  the 
superstition  of  the  past,  have  ceased  to  understand 
his  joy. 

As  with  St.  Paul,  so  it  is  with  all  that  brother- 
hood of  love  and  power  —  St.  Peter  and  St.  James 
and  the  author  of  the  letter  to  the  Hebrews,  even 


chap,  v     PROPHETS   AND   APOSTLES      145 

St.  John  the  Divine.     They  had  all  a  far  greater 
share  of  the  light  than  had  the  Baptist,  in  whom 
culminated  the  antagonism  between  righteousness 
and  joy;    but  they  were  all  necessarily  burdened 
with  some  phase  of  the  asceticism  that  bound  him 
1  he  bed-rock  of  their  thought  was  made  up,  not 
as  we   sometimes   suppose,   of  the   highest  utter- 
ances  of  the   Old   Testament   prophets   and   the 
psalmists,  but  of  these  mingled  and  overwhelmed 
with    the    low    standards    of    the    Levitical    and 
Apocryphal  books  and  the  smaller  ideas  of  a  more 
primitive  age  —  the  limitations  of  a  national  God 
and  a  national  charity.     Under  such  limiting  con- 
ditions they  had  to  interpret  the  Christ  by  whose 
imparted   life  they   became   sons  of  God.     They 
carried   the   torch   of  the   Light  farther   into   the 
surrounding  darkness;   but  what  they  carried  was 
a   torch    lit   at   the    Light,    not   the    Light   itself, 
and  the  torch  flared  and  smoked.     Its  Light  was 
glorious  and  eternal,  but  the  smoke  arose  because 
the  very  material  of  the  torch  was  partly  made  up 
of  error.  r 

In  any  case  it  is  obvious  that  whenever  the 
followers  of  Christ,  professing  to  believe  in  the 
stupendous  fact  of  the  Incarnation,  put  the  words 
and  actions  of  their  master  Christ  only  on  a  level 
with  those  of  Christian  teachers,  they  breed  in  the 
intelligent  onlooker  contempt  for  their  conception 
of  the  Divine  nature  as  shown  forth  in  that  brief 
flash  of  perfect  life.  If  we  revise  his  actions  and 
opinions  by  the  standard  of  any  other  man  it  is 
clear  that  we  lack  either  the  power  to  realise  any 
meaning  m  the  doctrine  or  fidelity  to  it.     It  is 


146  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

needful  to  believe  that  the  Divine  Spirit  remained 
with  them  —  remains  with  us  for  ever  —  to  reflect 
and  illuminate  and  enlarge  upon  that  one  exquisite 
creation  of  virtue's  perfect  proportion  whose  out- 
ward form  was  so  soon  destroyed;  but  when  we 
ignore  or  deny  any  part  of  the  teaching  of  that 
perfect  life  and  ministry,  lower  its  standards, 
diminish  its  force,  or  change  its  emphasis,  because 
his  first  followers  did  so,  this  is  surely  an  actual 
rejection  of  the  doctrine  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ  —  the  most  powerful  of  all  rejections  if  it 
come  to  the  world  with  Christian  authority. 


CHAPTER   VI 

IRREVERENT    ECLECTICISM 

In  view  of  what  has  been  said  in  the  preceding 
chapter  let  us  now  consider  what  light  is  thrown 
by  the  Jewish  and  Christian  Scriptures  on  the 
question  of  God's  relation  to  suffering.  It  is  a 
remarkable  fact  that  all  down  the  Christian  ages, 
alike  in  times  of  ignorance  and  of  light,  we  have 
read  those  Scriptures  with  intense  solemnity  and 
awe  and,  with  that,  have  not  scrupled  to  exercise 
an  eclecticism  in  our  interpretation,  the  folly  and 
irreverence  of  which  any  child  might  perceive.  As 
long  as  we  accepted  the  various  witnesses  in  our 
Bible  as  all  infallible,  we  were  indeed  driven  to 
practically  emphasising  one  and  ignoring  another 
in  order  to  get  any  coherent  doctrine  as  to  the 
nature  and  effect  of  pain. 

In  the  later  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  and 
in  the  early  Christian  years,  we  find  men  struggling 
to  adjust  their  experience  of  good  and  bad  fortune 
to  a  progressive  belief  in  God's  universal  provi- 
dence. For  them  we  can  have  only  respect. 
They  were  faced  with  conflicting  ideas,  and  with 
noble  candour  they  wrote  as  they  thought,  now 
one  way,  now  another. 

147 


148  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

"As  a  man  chasteneth  his  son,  so  the  Lord 
thy  God  chasteneth  thee."1  These  words  occur 
in  a  sermon  (Deut.  v.-xi.)  which  the  authors  of 
Deuteronomy  put  into  the  mouth  of  Moses.  In 
the  same  sermon  Israel  is  told  that  if  he  obey  the 
law  every  earthly  pleasure  shall  be  given  as  a 
reward.  He  is  also  told  to  destroy  utterly  every 
neighbouring  nation.  "Thou  shalt  smite  them 
and  utterly  destroy  them;  thou  shalt  make  no 
covenant  with  them,  nor  show  mercy  unto  them."2 
If  we  are  not  prepared  to  believe  that  God  incited 
Israel  to  spend  years  in  slaughtering  the  men, 
women,  children,  and  cattle  of  adjacent  nations; 
if  we  are  not  prepared  to  believe  that  had  Israel 
kept  the  laws  given  them,  perfect  prosperity  and 
immunity  from  all  misfortune  would  have  re- 
sulted, then  we  must  admit  that  any  quotation 
from  this  same  sermon  carries  with  it  only  the 
authority  given  to  it  by  our  own  instinctive  sense 
of  truth,  and  that,  with  our  imperfectly  developed 
power  of  spiritual  insight,  we  do  well  to  test  any 
favourite  quotation  by  the  Gospel  story. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  every  passage  in  the 
Old  Testament  that  deals  with  God's  punitive 
actions  toward  men.  The  oft-quoted  passage  in 
Proverbs,  "My  son,  despise  not  the  chastening 
of  the  Lord,  neither  weary  of  his  reproof,  for  whom 
the  Lord  loveth  he  chasteneth,"  is  preceded  by 
the  statement  that  if  we  honour  God  with  the 
first-fruits  of  our  substance  we  shall  be  given  more 
corn  and  wine  than  we  know  what  to  do  with,3 
and  is  followed  by  the  statement  that  the  wisdom 
1  Deut.  viii.  5.         2  Deut.  vii.  2.  3  Prov.  iii.  10. 


CH.    VI 


IRREVERENT   ECLECTICISM      i49 

produced  by  God's  seventy  will  give  us  length  of 
days,  honour,  and  riches.1  Both  the  idea  that  God 
saves  by  suffering  and  the  idea  that  the  good  are 
to  be  happy  in  this  life  have  equal  countenance  in 
this  passage;  if  we  reject  its  validity  as  teaching 
that  the  deserving  will  be  happy  in  this  world  we 
cannot  urge  its  authority  as  teaching  that  suffer- 
ing is  a  mark  of  God's  favour.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  saying  that  God  chastens  those  he  loves 
was  accepted  and  emphasised  by  that  higher  class 
of  Jewish  religious  thinkers  who  looked  to  suffer- 
ing for  salvation,  and  was  by  them  incorporated 
into  Christianity,  just  as  the  more  popular  idea 
that  earthly  prosperity  was  the  reward  promised 
for  service  was  imported  into  Christianity  by 
the  converts  from  legal  Judaism. 

There    are    not    many    more    noble    pieces    of 
literature   in   the  world   than   the   Epistle   to  the 
Hebrews,  very  few  from  which   so  much  of  the 
true  spirit  of  Christianity  can  be  learned;  but  there 
are  passages  in  it  that  we  cannot  incorporate  into 
our  scheme  of  thought,  nor  can  we,  in  these  days, 
think  ourselves  into  the  author's  point  of  view  on 
many  matters.     Take,  for  example,  the  statement 
in  chap.  vi.  verses  4  to  6,  that  if  a  convert,  having 
understood    the    Christian    doctrine    and    known 
its    power,    should    fall    away,    it    is    impossible 
to    renew    such    an    one    unto    repentance.     The 
chapters  that  have  been  written  to  explain  away 
the  plain  meaning  of  this  passage  prove  that  the 
common  sense  of  the  Church  does  not  accept  the 
author    in    this    matter.     Or   take    the    argument 
1  Prov.  iii.  16. 


150  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

concerning  the  oath  God  sware  to  Abraham,1  or 
the  historical  sketch  of  Melchisedec.2  Of  these 
we  rightly  say  that  unless  the  future  throws  further 
light  upon  their  meaning,  they  imply  trains  of 
thought  and  imagery  which  mankind  has  out- 
grown. When  the  same  writer  assures  us  that  the 
suffering  of  Jesus  on  earth  wrought  his  purification,3 
and  quotes  the  Old  Testament  to  show  that  God's 
action  to  those  he  loves  best  is  always  punitive,4 
his  words  cannot  establish  the  doctrine  for  us. 
Perplexity  of  ideas  as  to  the  method  of  God's 
dealing  with  men  and  the  origin  of  misfortunes  is 
also  shown  in  the  magnificent  Apocalyptic  poem 
of  the  Revelation.  The  apostle  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  the  risen  Christ  this  quotation  from  the 
Book  of  Proverbs.  "As  many  as  I  love  I  rebuke 
and  chasten."5  Here  Jesus  himself  is  represented 
as  the  source  of  pain.  In  the  same  vision  he  is 
represented  as  saying,  "The  devil  is  about  to  cast 
some  of  you  into  prison,  where  ye  may  have 
tribulation  ten  days";6  "Antipas,  my  faithful  one, 
who  was  killed  .  .  .  where  Satan  dwelleth. "  7  In 
these  texts  we  seem  to  have  the  Evil  One  as  the 
source  of  human  suffering.  Again,  in  the  same 
vision  the  Lord  says,  "He  that  keepeth  my  works 
unto  the  end,  to  him  will  I  give  authority  over  the 
nations,  and  he  shall  rule  them  with  a  rod  of  iron, 
as  the  vessels  of  the  potter  are  broken  to  pieces."  8 
Here  we  seem  to  have  the  spirits  of  just  men  made 

1  Hebrews  vi.  13.  5  Rev.  iii.  19. 

2  Ibid.  vii.  1— 17.  6  Ibid.  ii.  10. 

3  Ibid.  v.  8.  7  Ibid.  ii.  13. 

4  Ibid.  xii.  5-12.  *  Ibid.  ii.  26-27. 


ch.  vi     IRREVERENT    ECLECTICISM       151 

perfect  as  a  source  of  evil  to  wicked  men  upon 
earth.  From  among  many  similar  passages  we 
may  take  that  salient  one  where  St.  Paul  states 
that  his  thorn  in  the  flesh  was  the  messenger  of 
Satan,  and  that  yet  he  was  taught  to  regard  it  as 
the  will  of  God.  This  is  in  harmony  with  the 
Book  of  Job,  and  the  idea  underlies  much  of  the 
best  literature  of  the  intervening  centuries.  An 
eclecticism  which  emphasises  one  of  these  two  sets 
of  ideas  and  ignores  the  other,  while  claiming  the 
authority  of  Scripture  for  such  proceeding,  is  self- 
destructive. 

We  are  forced,  then,  if  we  would  find  any 
certain  voice  telling  us  the  relation  of  God  to 
physical  evil,  to  look  for  it  only  in  the  revelation 
of  Jesus. 


CHAPTER   VII 

DREAMS    OF    JUSTICE 

We  are  all  imbued  with  the  notion,  not  only  that 
under  the  rule  of  a  good  God  justice  must  exist, 
but  that  mankind  has  arrived  at  some  idea  of  in 
what  that  divine  justice  must  consist.  It  seems 
more  likely  that  the  human  race  is  still  in  its 
childhood,  and  that  it  has  not  grasped  such  a 
notion  of  justice  as  approximates  to  divine  justice. 
In  this  connection  it  is  a  very  interesting  fact  that 
the  doctrine  of  Jesus  in  some  points  sets  aside  the 
human  sense  of  justice  as  negligible. 

Our  modern  notion  of  ideal  justice  has  been 
expressed  as  "the  distribution  of  good  and  evil 
according  to  desert." 

"When  we  speak  of  the  world  as  justly  governed 
by  God,  we  seem  to  mean  that,  if  we  could  know 
the  whole  of  human  existence,  we  should  find 
that  happiness  is  distributed  among  men  according 
to  their  deserts.  .  .  .  Common  sense  seems  to 
hold  that  a  man  who  has  done  wrong  ought  to 
suffer  pain  in  return  (even  if  no  benefit  result 
either  to  him  or  to  others  from  the  pain),  and  that 
justice    requires    this;     although    the    individual 

l52 


chap,  vii       DREAMS    OF    JUSTICE  153 

wronged  ought  not  to  seek  or  desire  to  inflict  the 
pain."1 

This  idea  of  justice  has  been  applied  among 
religious  men  in  formulating  an  objection  to  what 
has  been  called  the  "substitutional"  doctrine  of 
the  death  of  Jesus;  men  will  say  that  God  could 
not  be  so  unjust  as  to  punish  one  for  another's  sin, 
that  every  man  must  bear  the  punishment  of  his 
own  sin,  and  so  forth. 

Theory  apart,  in  the  actual  world  around  us 
retributive  justice,  as  man  has  conceived  it  and  as 
expressed  in  the  above  quotation,  does  not  appear 
to  have  any  existence.  We  meet  with  rude 
attempts  toward  it  made  by  human  civilisations 
for  their  own  protection,  but  these  admittedly  do 
not  realise  the  ideal.  The  idea,  however,  of  the 
Supreme  Power  as  dealing  to  every  man  a  punish- 
ment exactly  fitted  to  his  misdoing  rose  with  the 
conception  of  individual  responsibility,  and  is  the 
idea  of  justice  upon  which  all  penal  codes  are 
founded.  It  was  a  strong  force  in  Greek  thought, 
was  certainly  the  strongest  bulwark  of  Roman 
civilisation,  and  lies  perhaps  as  deep  as  any  assur- 
ance in  the  modern  mind.  This  idea  has  been  an 
important  factor  in  the  education  of  the  race;  so 
also  were  the  communal  ideas  of  justice  which 
preceded  it,  and  which  for  a  long  period  of  transi- 
tion were  confused  with  it.  When  a  man  regarded 
himself  as  only  part  of  a  tribe,  when  law-breaking 
was  conceived  as  producing  in  him  a  quality  of 
guilt  which  was  infectious,  and  which  would  rapidly 
spread  to  the  innocent  around  him,  men's  idea  of 

1  The  Methods  of  Ethics,  by  H.  Sidgwick,  Book  III.  Chap.  V. 


154  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

righteous  dealing  often  involved  the  destruction 
of  a  whole  family  or  tribe  or  nation;  even  the 
very  cattle  they  possessed  were  also  exterminated 
if  they  came  under  the  ban.  This  was  a  sense  of 
right  which  seems  to  have  existed  for  more  centuries 
than  has  the  more  modern  notion.  It  had  in  it 
germs  of  truth  that  an  extreme  individualism  is 
apt  to  ignore;  but  it  was  not  a  true  ideal.  It 
is  impossible  to  think  that  it  dwells  as  an  ideal 
in  the  heart  of  a  personal  God;  yet  it  is  the  copy 
and  reflection  of  the  justice  which  his  laws  of 
matter  mete  out.  The  child  that  plays  with  fire 
is  burnt,  but  so  also,  if  he  have  done  enough 
mischief,  is  the  house  containing  him,  and,  as  far 
as  natural  law  is  concerned,  the  town  in  which  he 
lives  and  all  in  it. 

The  ideal  of  a  retributive  justice  adjusted  to 
personal  deserts  must  pass  away,  as  did  the  older 
ideal;  because  the  very  essence  of  it  is  that  a  man 
must  bear  the  punishment  of  his  own  sin  and  not 
of  another's  sin,  and  such  justice  does  not,  and 
can  never,  exist  in  life  as  we  know  it.  A  world 
in  which  it  exists  may  or  may  not  be  possible,  but 
we  have  not  the  slightest  evidence  of  its  possibility. 
Each  individual  in  such  a  world  would  need  to  be 
so  separated  from  all  others  as  to  bear  to  them 
no  relation  of  love  or  affection  or  protection  or 
dependence.  In  our  actual  world  a  man  is 
commonly  loved  more  or  less  by  father  and  mother, 
sister  and  brother,  wife  and  child,  friend  and  fellow- 
citizen.  If  he  degrades  himself  by  vice  or  crime, 
some  or  all  of  these  suffer  more  than  he;  and  the 
more  really  innocent  they  are  of  any  inclination  to 


chap,  vii       DREAMS    OF    JUSTICE  155 

his  failings,  the  more  sensitive  they  are  to  the  suffer- 
ing. If,  as  the  Christian  believes,  God  also  loves  this 
wrongdoer  with  a  love  infinite  and  tender  beyond 
the  sum  of  all  earthly  loves,  and  with  a  divine 
innocence  to  which  the  thought  of  wrong  is  loath- 
some, God  also  must  suffer  —  and  suffer  with 
divine  intensity  of  passion  —  for  the  man's  sin. 
What  justice  can  we  conceive  of  here  ?  What 
can  requite  the  sinner's  father  and  mother  for  the 
heartbreak  his  sin  has  caused  them  ?  or  his  wife, 
who  identifies  herself  with  him,  exercising  for  him 
the  passion  of  contrition  of  which  he  is  wholly 
incapable  ?  or  his  child  for  a  blasted  youth  and 
the  taint  of  moral  obliquity  which  he  in  his  turn 
may  transmit  to  future  generations  ?  or  his  fellows 
for  the  degree  in  which  the  average  level  of  virtue 
has  fallen  ?  above  all,  what  can  requite  God  for 
his  pain  ?  Can  any  suffering  on  the  culprit's  part 
requite  them  ?  Certainly  not;  it  will  only  increase 
their  woe.  As  the  suffering  of  the  culprit  is 
increased  by  penalty,  the  suffering  of  all  those 
innocent  ones  who  love  him  is  increased,  and 
God's  suffering  is  cumulatively  increased.  The 
God  in  whom  the  Christian  believes  —  immanent 
in  the  spirits  of  men,  transcending  them  in  ever- 
vigilant  compassion  —  suffers  in  the  sorrow  of  all 
as  well  as  in  their  sin;  he  suffers,  therefore,  in  the 
sorrow  of  parent  and  friend,  wife  and  child,  and 
of  the  culprit  also.  How,  then,  can  the  endurance 
of  any  punishment  by  the  culprit,  though  richly 
merited,  set  things  right  when  every  moment  of 
pain  that  he  endures  inflicts  greater  pain  upon  the 
innocent  ?     It  is,  then,  the  utmost  folly  to  talk  of 


156  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE 

a  man  appropriating  the  punishment  of  his  own 
sins,  for  even  if  we  suppose  him  to  be  a  member 
of  society  unloved  by  any  and  worthless  to  all, 
we  must  still  be  aware  that  his  suffering  and 
degradation  means  suffering  or  degradation  to  all 
who  touch  his  existence  at  any  point,  and  the 
greater  according  to  their  goodness.  Thus  it  is 
clear  that  in  any  human  existence  which  we  can 
understand,  the  innocent,  both  God  and  man, 
suffer  for  the  guilty,  and  any  penalty  inflicted  on 
guilt  must  increase  their  suffering. 

This,  to  our  minds,  unjust  retribution,  which 
involves  the  innocent  suffering  with  the  guilty 
and  suffering  more  than  the  guilty,  may  be 
regarded  in  two  ways,  either  of  which  suggest  that 
it  may  be  a  part  of  some  higher  justice  beyond 
our  sight.  It  may  be  regarded  as  a  deterrent  to 
other  would-be  sinners;  it  may  be  right  that  the 
sinner,  and  every  one  else  in  his  generation  to  some 
degree,  should  suffer  for  the  sin  in  order  that 
those  who  come  after  may  be  made  afraid;  but 
we  must  allow  that  this,  even  as  it  affects  the 
sinner,  is  not  consonant  with  the  modern  notion 
of  justice,  which  would  refuse  to  punish  a  man 
because  other  men's  children  will  be  frail  and 
peccable.  Or,  secondly,  it  may  be  that  sin  is  not 
an  accident  of  this  or  that  man's  will,  but  the 
manifestation  of  a  vital  power  or  evil  personality 
other  than  human,  whose  every  activity  is  doomed 
to  self-destruction  in  which  minor  personalities 
who  admit  his  working  must  share  to  the  degree 
in  which  they  admit  it.  On  this  theory  pain, 
according  to  the  law  of  the  kingdom  of  evil?  might 


chap,  vii       DREAMS    OF    JUSTICE  157 

necessarily  follow  sin,  being  part  of  the  process, 
the  working  of  the  seeds  of  death.  Taking  this 
view  we  do  not  conceive  of  the  penalty  as  meted 
out  by  the  direct  will  of  a  righteous  judge,  but 
merely  as  an  evil  and  inevitable  growth  from  the 
germ  of  sin  —  sin  and  pain  together  being,  as  it 
were,  a  cancer  in  the  individual  and  the  race  which, 
unless  cured,  must  destroy  its  victim. 

Such  an  explanation  of  the  actual  condition  of 
things  may  be  the  embodiment  of  a  higher  justice, 
but  it  is  a  justice  higher  than  we  have  conceived 
or  can  now  conceive.  On  such  a  view  the  penalty, 
not  being  inflicted  by  a  judge,  could  not  be  remitted 
as  a  judge  might  remit  a  sentence  he  himself  had 
passed.  Let  us  attempt  a  crude  analogy.  A  man 
might  do  another  serious  injury  with  an  explosive, 
but  if  the  circumstances  were  such  that  the  crimi- 
nal could  not  avoid  being  shattered  to  pieces,  the 
injured  man  could  not  by  the  frankest  forgiveness 
remit  the  penalty.  Similarly  we  may  conceive  that 
the  forgiveness  of  the  divine  judge  could  not 
interfere  with  the  action  of  laws  he  has  ordained. 
All  that  he  could  do  would  be  to  lift  the  culprit 
out  of  the  sphere  in  which  those  laws  operated,  if 
there  were  such  other  sphere.  In  human  affairs 
we  see  what  suggests  this  possibility.  Many 
diseases  may  be  cured  by  lifting  men  from  foul 
surroundings  to  live  in  cleanliness  and  purer  air. 
Strong  sunshine  will  kill  those  germs  of  disease 
that  make  ravages  in  the  dark. 

We  thus  see  that  the  idea  of  pain  being  re- 
tributive may  in  two  ways,  not  mutually  exclusive, 
be  rendered  possibly  reasonable;    but,  in  working, 


158  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

retributive  pain  never  embodies  the  ideal  of 
individual  justice  because  of  the  greater  measure  of 
innocent  suffering  which  the  infliction  of  penalty 
always  involves.  The  only  way  in  which  such 
retributive  pain  can  be  conceived  as  realising 
justice  is  by  supposing  that  it  can  be  so  allotted  to 
the  culprit  as  to  raise  his  moral  worth  to  such 
extent  that  he  will  certainly  be,  after  the  experience, 
the  source  of  an  amount  of  joy  to  his  fellows  and 
to  God  that  will  exactly  compensate  their  innocent 
suffering  on  his  account. 

How  far  does  experience  suggest  that  the 
suffering  of  penalty  has  a  corresponding,  or  any, 
reformatory  effect  upon  the  culprit  ?  Reviewing 
the  storm  and  stress  of  evolution,  the  moralist 
inquires  what  part  pain  has  played  in  the  age-long 
development  of  character,  and  it  is  not  uncommon 
to  assume  that  in  this  aspect  the  uses  of  pain  have 
been  all  beneficial.  Against  this  theory  we  have 
to  set  the  fact  that  pain  has  undoubtedly  produced 
such  qualities  as  fear,  cowardice,  cunning,  anger, 
hatred,  spite.  These  qualities  are  not  evoked  in 
an  individual  or  in  a  race  by  the  joyful  exercise  of 
the  natural  powers  of  life;  therefore,  if  to  the  pain 
and  difficulty  of  existence  we  owe  noble  character- 
istics —  strength  of  will,  fortitude,  courage,  com- 
passion —  we  also  derive  our  more  malignant 
qualities  from  the  same  source;  and  any  argument 
as  to  the  value  of  pain  which  emphasises  the  virtues 
it  engenders  and  does  not  recognise  the  vices 
derived  from  it,  is  fallacious.  Indeed,  it  would 
appear  that  we  might  go  farther,  for  while,  as  our 
knowledge  stands  at  present,  we  have  no  reason  at 


chap,  vii       DREAMS    OF    JUSTICE  159 

all  to  suppose  that  a  creature  whose  ancestors  had 
never  suffered  privation  or  been  hurt  or  robbed 
would  know  anger,  hatred,  or  envy,  we  have  no 
proof  that  the  opposite  virtues  could  not  have  been 
developed  with  less  racial  suffering.  For  example, 
a  child  who  has  never  been  threatened  or  hurt  does 
not,  except  by  heredity,  feel  fear  of  its  kind ;  but 
being  possessed  of  a  new  plaything,  it  may  feel 
compassion  for  the  child  who  has  none,  although 
the  fact  of  having  no  new  toy  would  not  of  itself 
necessitate  positive  suffering  in  the  other.  Again, 
fortitude,  strength  of  will,  and  courage  are  culti- 
vated by  strenuous  pursuits  which  men  rank  as 
pleasures,  as  well  as  by  misfortune.  It  is  therefore 
more  reasonable  to  suppose  that  human  and 
animal  virtue  might  have  been  developed  without 
what  appears  to  us  pain  and  disorder  than  to 
suppose  that  angry  passions  could  have  existed 
without  these  irritating  causes. 

We  thus  conclude  that  the  penalty  of  wrong- 
doing is  not,  and  cannot  be,  so  distributed  in  this 
social  order  as  to  realise  man's  ideal  of  justice; 
and  further,  that  there  is  no  presumption  —  quite 
the  contrary  —  that  the  corrective  influence  of 
penalty  so  far  as  borne  by  the  culprit,  is  such  as  to 
give  the  community  by  his  reformation  an  advan- 
tage that  balances  the  suffering  he  has  cost. 

Further,  if  we  are  bound  by  the  constitution  of 
our  minds  to  believe  that  justice  exists  and  to 
attribute  it  to  God,  we  must  do  so  frankly,  admit- 
ting that  we  have  no  conception  of  what  divine 
justice   must   be. 

This  is  an  important  point  to  realise  in  studying 


160  THE   FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

the  gospel  of  Jesus.  To  accept  that  gospel  is  to 
believe  that  ideal  justice  exists,  because  without  it 
there  could  be  no  forgiveness.  Because  we  cannot 
comprehend  God's  justice  we  are  forced  to  realise 
that  we  can  in  no  way  comprehend  his  forgiveness. 
Forgiveness  from  God  to  man,  from  man  to  man, 
Jesus  taught  was  a  terrible  reality.  How  terrible 
to  man  the  obligation  to  forgive  his  brother  all 
manner  of  wrong  !  how  terrible  to  know  that  God's 
forgiveness  depends  upon  this  !  How  terrible  to  a 
man  the  joy  of  knowing  himself  forgiven  by  God ! 
And  Jesus  represents  God's  forgiveness  as  entirely 
beyond  and  above  human  notions  of  desert;  he 
always  represents  God  as  maintaining  toward  man 
an  attitude  of  entire  forgiveness  and  bestowing 
upon  man  the  consciousness  of  his  forgiveness  in 
instant  response  to  every  heart-felt  appeal  to  his 
mercy.  Further,  he  represents  God  as  imposing 
the  same  attitude  on  every  faithful  soul  toward  his 
fellow-men ;  if  a  man  would  continue  conscious  of 
God's  forgiveness  he  must  maintain  toward  other 
men  the  attitude  God  maintains  toward  him,  an 
attitude  of  perfect  forgiveness  which  will  be  as 
frankly  expressed  the  moment  the  wrongdoer 
desires  its  expression. 

That  such  whole-hearted  forgiveness  should  be 
consistent  with  God's  infliction  of  penalty  on  the 
sinner  is  only  possible  under  the  conviction  that  the 
penalty  is  good  for  the  sinner.  We  have  seen  that 
there  is  no  evidence  to  uphold  this  very  old 
explanation  of  the  problem  of  suffering;  we  must 
now  observe  that  Jesus  did  not  give  his  authority 
to  it.     He  speaks  of  penalties  and  places  of  punish- 


chap,  vii       DREAMS    OF    JUSTICE  161 

ment  as  wholly  bad,  and  urges  their  essential 
harmfulness  as  one  of  the  strongest  motives  to 
righteousness.  He  speaks  of  forgiveness  from 
God  to  man,  and  from  man  to  man,  as  an  action  of 
supreme  importance,  and  emphasises  the  suffering, 
which  is  not  penal,  of  those  who,  being  persecuted, 
must  thus  forgive.  In  his  imagery  the  tyrant  who 
kills  the  body  and  casts  the  spirit  into  hell  is  not 
God. 

But  more,  there  can   be  no  doubt  that  Jesus 
taught  that  God's  forgiveness,  when  so  bestowed  as 
to  enter  into  man's  consciousness,  did  include  escape 
from  the  penalty  of  sin;   and  the  manner  of  escape 
must   be  indicated   by  the  conditions  inseparable 
from   the   bestowal   of  the   gift.     The   appeal   for 
mercy,  however  instinctive,  however  little  thought 
out,   involves   an  estimate  of  God's  character  as 
love;     it    involves    the    recognition,    though    but 
momentary,  that  the  gift  can  only  proceed  from 
pure  love,  cannot  be  merited  either  by  virtue  or 
by  tears;    and  from  this  —  if  the  consciousness  of 
being  forgiven    is    to    be    continuous  —  from  this 
momentary  conception  of  God  as  love  must  pro- 
ceed the  same  love  to  men,  based,  not  upon  their 
deserts,  but  upon  that  love  which  in  its  essence 
is  feeling  as  our  fellow  feels,  or  community  of  life. 
When  Jesus  spoke  of  this  condition  of  heart  — 
the  reception  of  God's  gift  of  forgiveness,  the  out- 
flow and  passing  on  of  that  gift  to  the  world — he 
was  not  speaking  of  assent  to  a  doctrine,  or  to  a 
theory  of  life,  but  of  a  new  and  joyful  vision  of 
God  as  anointing  man  with  his  own  spirit  —  a  vision 
which   flesh   and   blood   could  not  reveal   but  the 


1 62  THE    FATHER'S    HOUSE        book  n 

Father  in  heaven.  The  endowment  of  love  was 
to  be  a  new  and  heavenly  treasure  within  men  of 
very  practical  worth,  a  strength  of  love  which 
would  save  them,  not  only  from  sin's  penalty,  but 
from  their  sins;  a  wisdom  of  love  which  would 
teach  them  what  to  say  to  their  persecutors  when 
they  were  set  upon  their  defence;  an  insight  of 
love  which  would  make  them  the  light  of  the 
world. 

From  this  it  seems  that  God's  forgiveness  lifts 
man  into  a  new  relationship  with  his  environment, 
or  we  may  say  the  intimate  and  personal  convic- 
tion of  God's  forgiveness  only  belongs  to  the  man 
who  has  been  thus  lifted.  In  this  environment 
there  is  nothing  to  fear.  The  Evil  Power  who 
tempts  to  sin  and  punishes  the  sinner  has  here  no 
part.  Again  and  again  Jesus  points  out  that  fear 
belongs  to  a  lower  region,  and  not  to  that  in  which 
man  estimates  God  as  love,  that  fear  only  comes 
where  faith  is  not.  But  the  penalty  of  sin  he 
always  speaks  of  as  an  object  of  great  fear;  he 
urges  the  fear  of  it  upon  men.  Indeed  he  taught 
that  the  penalty  of  sin,  like  the  sin  which  involved 
it,  was  evil. 

Thus  we  conclude,  in  harmony  with  the  thought 
of  all  good  men,  that  there  must  be  a  divine 
justice,  as  there  must  be  a  divine  mercy;  but  we 
have  reason  to  think  the  human  mind  has,  as  yet, 
no  conception  of  what  this  divine  justice  is. 
The  conclusion  to  which  the  gospel  points  is 
undoubtedly  that  put  forward  by  the  Johannine 
writings,  which  seek  to  express  the  divine  justice 
by  the  word  "love." 


BOOK    III 
GOD'S   CITADEL   ON    EARTH 


163 


CHAPTER   I 

THE    DEVIL   AND    HIS    ANGELS 

We  have  tried  to  show  that  the  works  of  Jesus 
must  be  the  strongest  and  simplest  expression  of 
the  revelation  he  came  to  bring.  In  the  following 
chapters  we  shall  be  concerned  with  his  works  of 
healing,  and  first  with  his  treatment  of  "unclean 
spirits,"  and  with  his  doctrine  concerning  the 
kingdom  of  evil  as  therein  exemplified. 

In  the  present  flux  of  thought  and  historical 
knowledge,  suspense  of  judgment  is  the  wisest 
attitude  toward  the  problems  connected  with  the 
ancient  doctrines  of  good  and  bad  spirits,  and  as 
to  the  true  significance  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
concerning  them.  At  the  same  time,  to  ignore 
or  mimimise  any  prominent  feature  in  the  record 
of  Jesus,  because  we  are  still  awaiting  more  light 
in  the  matter,  must  be  inimical  to  progress.  Truth 
has  nothing  to  fear  from  the  most  searching  ex- 
amination of  fact,  and  we  are  bound  to  make  that 
examination,  although  it  does  not  follow  that  with 
all  the  facts  we  are  now  able  to  muster  we  can 
arrive  at  any  certain  conclusion.  It  will,  moreover, 
often    be    found    that    the    hasty    generalisations 

165 


1 66    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH     book  m 

of  modern  thought  about  ancient  beliefs  are  of 
less  substantial  stuff  than  the  beliefs  they  would 
supersede.  Any  belief  that  has  held  the  world 
for  ages  is  likely  to  bear  a  close  relation  to  fact, 
even  though  the  fact  be  wrongly  interpreted. 

The  Christian  thought  of  Europe  from  the 
first  has  always  exercised  a  curious  choice  in  regard 
to  the  teaching  of  Jesus  about  the  unseen  world, 
forcing  a  literal  meaning  on  certain  figurative  pas- 
sages in  that  teaching,  and  admitting  the  wholly 
figurative  nature  of  others.  This  habit  bears 
witness  to  the  difficulty  of  knowing,  in  many 
cases,  what  he  really  meant  —  a  difficulty,  we  may 
remark  in  passing,  that  shows  the  need  of  accept- 
ing his  works  as  a  clue  to  his  words.  In  such  a 
passage  as  that  in  which  Jesus  bids  his  disciples 
rejoice,  not  so  much  because  spirits  were  in  sub- 
jection to  them,  but  rather  because  their  names 
were  written  in  the  book  of  life,  the  scholarship 
of  the  Church  has  for  the  most  part  understood 
"the  book  of  life"  to  be  a  figure  of  speech,  while 
accepting  the  "spirits"  as  objective  entities.  Is 
this  warranted  ?  There  was  in  very  ancient  thought 
an  association  between  the  casting  out  of  demons 
and  the  practice  of  keeping  a  private  name  in 
some  secret  and  sacred  text.  The  mystic  import- 
ance of  a  name,  its  influence  on  the  fate  of  its 
bearer,  the  custom  of  writing  the  name  in  a 
sacred  book  in  order  to  secure  safety  from  ill- 
fortune  —  these  notions  are  found  in  the  most 
ancient  magical  formulas.  Later,  among  the  Jews 
we  find  the  idea  of  an  eternal  book  which  was 
kept  before   God,   and   later   again,   the   doctrine 


ch.  i    THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS    167 

that  the  whole  history  of  men  was  written  down 
in  the  eternal  books.  This  last  form  of  the  idea 
was  elaborated  after  Hellenism  affected  Jewish 
thought.  This  "book  of  life"  was  certainly  not 
concrete;  it  was  allied  in  nature  rather  to  the 
Platonic  "ideas."  If  we  assume,  as  contemporary 
use  seems  to  justify  us  in  doing,  that  Jesus  used 
the  phrase,  "the  book  of  life,"  figuratively,  are 
we  justified  in  taking  literally  his  words  in  the 
same  passage  about  the  evil  "spirits"?  This 
opens  a  large  question  on  which  modern  science 
and  historic  demonology  throw  a  much  less  certain 
light  than  the  modern  man  often  supposes. 

We  turn  to  consider  the  attitude  of  Jesus 
toward  human  ills  and  their  cause,  and  find  that 
he  certainly  appeared  to  give  his  authority  to  the 
belief  in  a  separate  Evil  Will,  subordinate  to  God, 
transcending  man  in  evil  power,  and  immanent 
in  all  man's  wrongdoings  and  diseases.  Is  this 
view  inconsistent  with  any  knowledge  we  now 
possess  ?  and  if  not,  how  far  does  it  harmonise 
with  it  ? 

While  we  have  no  proof  that  all  he  said  and 
did  in  this  connection  may  not  have  been  simply 
a  parable  teaching  a  higher  truth,  we  are,  by  the 
laws  of  interpretation,  compelled  first  to  consider 
words  and  acts  in  their  face  meaning.  Current 
opinion  is  disposed  to  treat  the  Evil  One  as  a 
superstition,  and  to  regard  evil  as  only  the  negation 
of  good.  If  we  agree  that  to  believe  in  an  evil 
power  outside  ourselves  that  makes  for  unrighteous- 
ness is  absurd,  we  must  assume  that  our  Lord's 
doctrine  was  a  parable,  unless  it  was  a  mistake. 


1 68    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

Without  coming  to  any  dogmatic  conclusion,  let 
us  inquire  what  reason  there  is  for  joining  those 
who  would  cast  out  the  Evil  One  and  his  agents 
from  the  arena  of  sane  ideas. 

In  the  region  in  which  human  thought  can  be 
confirmed  by  experience,  we  have  to  recognise  the 
existence,  side  by  side,  of  a  multiplicity  of  wills. 
Experience  also  shows  that  those  wills  are  not 
all  good.  Let  the  conception  of  a  metaphysical 
dualism  of  good  and  evil  be  acknowleds;ed  unten- 
able;  but  so  also  to  most  minds  is  the  conception 
of  a  metaphysical  multiplicity  of  wills;  man's  free 
will  perishes  in  the  Absolute  just  as  surely  as  the 
devil  perishes.  Our  point  is  that  we  cannot  admit 
the  reality  of  free  will  in  the  domain  of  practical 
reason  and  deny  the  reality  of  the  evil  will  in  the 
same  domain.1 

The  facts  of  the  religious  consciousness  appear 
to  require  a  conception  not  only  of  a  Supreme 
Will  that  is  good,  but  of  evil  as  a  positive  voli- 
tional force.  The  Christian's  personal  experience 
will  in  this  matter  weigh  with  him  more  than 
argument,  and  opinions  will  differ.  We  may  take 
one  illustration  out  of  many  that  would  serve  to 
show  the  difficulty  of  considering  evil  as  a  mere 
negation.  Let  us  take  any  body  of  men  who 
certainly  cherish  what  Dr.  Gwatkin  calls  "the 
vital  spark  of  mysticism"  —  "the  conviction,  acted 
on,  that  a  true  communion  with  the  divine  is  given 
to  all  that  purify  themselves  with  all  the  force  of 
heart  and  soul  and  mind."  We  must  believe,  as 
the  tenor  of  their  lives  is  good,  that  God  finds  en- 

1  See  Appendix  C. 


ch.  i     THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS    i6g 

trance  to  their  minds  in  the  religion  they  practise. 
We  observe,  however,  that  when  some  new  move- 
ment of  the  higher  life  begins  to  stir  about  them, 
or,  as  we  might  put  it,  some  new  development  of 
the  Christ-life  finds  expression  in  some  part  of  the 
public  consciousness,  it  is  this  very  class  of  religious 
men  who  commonly  offer  it  the  most  violent 
opposition.  It  is  not  until  the  life  of  a  generation 
has  proved  that  the  new  thing  is  of  God  that 
they,  or  their  successors,  receive  it.  This  seems  to 
suggest  that  the  very  susceptibility  of  their  nature 
to  divine  influence  renders  them  also  more  open 
than  irreligious  men  to  fiendish  influence.  What 
they  oppose  is  often  a  matter,  not  of  belief,  but 
of  mere  humanity.  The  nature  of  their  opposi- 
tion, its  force  and  pertinacity,  certainly  suggest 
the  work  of  a  spiritual  evil  within  their  own 
spirits. 

If  we  reject  the  idea  of  an  Evil  Will,  spiritual 
and  positive,  are  we  prepared  to  support  any 
alternative  theory  ?  Shall  we  say  that  moral  evil 
is  not  a  reality  ?  that  if  a  man  tramples  his  child 
or  his  mother  to  death,  his  action  is  relatively  the 
best  that  might  be  ?  Or,  granting  the  reality  of 
wrong,  can  we  assume  that  in  all  this  vast  universe 
of  dreadful  a  thing  as  sin  occurs  only  on  this  atom 
of  earth  and  only  in  the  heart  of  man  ?  Or,  if  we 
admit  that  the  evil  which  is  part  of  all  things  that 
we  know  may  also  be  a  part  of  vaster  regions  of 
life  than  we  can  conceive  of,  must  we  assume  that 
it  is  always,  everywhere,  sporadic,  and  lacks  any 
synthetic  determination  ?  We  find  a  final  Source 
and  Centre  of  good  to  be  a  reasonable  postulate 


170    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

from  the  good  we  see  everywhere;  why,  then,  is 
such  a  postulate  from  omnipresent  evil  unreason- 
able ?  All  that  seems  to  be  required  to  preserve 
the  unity  of  nature  is  that  the  Evil  Will  should 
act  under  some  law  of  self-destruction  which  keeps 
it  subordinate  to  the  Good  Will  which  bringeth 
forth  life. 

Let  us  briefly  glance  at  the  history  of  this  idea 
of  an  Evil  Will  in  active  antagonism  to  God,  to 
see  how  far  it  may  thus  be  justified. 

We  have  now  recovered  from  the  graves  of 
dead  nations  an  account  of  the  way  in  which  the 
Gentile  world  before  Christ  expressed  its  religious 
passion,  an  account  sufficiently  clear  for  us  to  know 
how  far  the  world  had  then  come  in  its  search 
after  God.  Voluminous  liturgies,  which  date  from 
some  four  millenniums  before  Christ,  show  well- 
established  religious  ideas,  which  were  modified 
and  developed,  but  not  radically  changed,  in  the 
succeeding  centuries.  From  Babylonia  and  Assyria, 
from  Egypt,  especially  from  Persia  and  Greece,  we 
gather  elements  that  contributed  to  the  religious 
beliefs  of  Palestine  at  the  Christian  era.  In  the 
forefront  of  all  genuine,  practical  religion  was  the 
belief  that  misfortunes  had  their  source  in  the 
unseen  powers,  and  that  relief  from  them  must  be 
sought  by  prayer  addressed  either  to  the  better 
disposition  of  the  very  power  which  sent  them,  or 
to  some  other  unseen  power  of  a  better  disposition. 
In  polytheistic  religions  there  was  a  tendency  to 
attribute  benefits  to  the  higher  deities  and  afflic- 
tions to  inferior  powers;  individual  misfortunes, 
especially  bodily  ills,  came  to  be  regarded  as  the 


ch.  i     THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS     171 

work  of  minor  deities,  or,  later,  of  mischievous 
spirits  of  a  low  order. 

But  all  progress  in  the  unification  of  knowledge 
seems  to  be  dependent  on  the  conception  of  a  God 
supreme  and  good.  The  One  of  the  scientist,  the 
One  of  the  philosopher,  the  One  of  the  theologian, 
is  the  only  satisfaction  of  reason  and  the  great 
incitement  to  the  search  for  truth.  At  the  same 
time  the  mere  conception  of  God  as  One  was  not 
sufficient  for  moral  development;  the  One  must 
also  be  good.  We  scarcely  realise  how  slowly  the 
need  to  think  of  God  as  moral  has  asserted  itself 
even  among  the  Hebrews.  Up  to  a  comparatively 
late  date  in  Old  Testament  theology  the  conception 
of  God's  oneness  led  to  making  his  spirit  the 
immediate  source  and  inspiration  of  all  human 
qualities,  —  alike  of  love  and  hatred,  truth  and 
cunning,  placability  and  anger,  —  just  as  the  neces- 
sity of  believing  God  to  be  one  leads  men  now  to 
suppose  his  will  to  be  the  direct  source  of  all 
human  fortune  —  of  joy  and  sorrow,  health  and 
disease,  scarcity  and  plenty.  The  later  Jewish 
prophets,  however,  and  the  writers  of  Deuteronomy 
presented  God  as  preferring  justice  and  truth  to 
license  and  dishonesty.  Thus  the  Hebrew  religion 
had  the  early  distinction  of  attributing  to  God 
only  what  they  thought  to  be  moral  goodness; 
and  the  most  religious  Jews  before  Christ  came 
reached  the  idea  that  God's  will  was  always  on 
the  side  of  moral  right  as  they  understood  it. 

We  have  already  noted  that  among  the  heathen 
misfortunes  of  all  sorts  had  come  to  be  regarded 
either  as  the  legitimate  anger  of  good  deities  or  as 


172    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

the  mischief  inflicted  by  inferior  powers.  When 
the  Jews  had  arrived  at  some  distinction  between 
moral  good  and  moral  evil,  and  realised  that  the 
first  only  could  be  attributed  to  God,  they  naturally 
thought  of  the  source  of  moral  evil  as  in  opposition 
to  God.  If  God  could  not  tempt  man  to  dd  evil, 
temptation  was  naturally  attributed  to  another 
power.  This  power  was  not  in  any  way  co-equal 
with  God  or  able  to  act  without  his  permission, 
but  still  powerful  in  mundane  affairs,  as  we  see  in 
the  prologue  to  the  Book  of  Job. 

Although  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  belief 
in  a  malign  spiritual  kingdom  or  hierarchy  came 
into  the  Jewish  religion  from  heathen  sources, 
chiefly  those  of  the  Babylonian  stock,  some 
equivalent  for  "Satan"  must  have  loomed  on  their 
religious  horizon  in  any  case  when  their  prophets 
perceived  with  ever-growing  clearness  that  the 
inspiration  of  evil  passions  in  the  heart  of  man 
could  no  longer  be  attributed  to  God.  The  fact 
of  its  foreign  source  is  not  to  the  prejudice  of  the 
belief,  because  the  earlier  Jewish  religious  concep- 
tions —  of  God,  of  holiness,  of  transgression,  etc. 
—  were  originally  from  the  same  source,  tapped,  as 
one  might  say,  farther  back.  Wherever  learnt, 
the  belief  in  a  devil  was  bound  to  come.  The 
conception  of  man  as  the  origin  of  that  profound 
principle  which,  opposed  to  good,  appears  to  lie 
at  the  heart  of  all  things  that  we  know,  and  to  be 
represented  in  some  aspect  of  all  things,  was  not 
possible  to  the  ancient  world,  and  therefore  the 
conception  of  the  Evil  Will  in  the  spiritual  world 
was  to  them  a  necessity  of  thought. 


ch.  i     THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS     173 

Our  question  is  whether  we  have  outgrown 
this  necessity.  The  notion  of  an  Evil  Will 
outside  our  own  does  not  in  the  slightest  degree 
explain  the  origin  of  evil;  but,  granting  that  evil 
exists  and  is  permitted  to  run  rampant  for  the 
sake  of  personal  moral  freedom,  there  is  no  law 
of  reason  which  requires  us  to  identify  it  with 
ourselves.  It  thus  does  not  appear  to  be  more 
superstitious  to  believe  in  the  Evil  One  than  to 
believe  that  man  in  this  earthly  life  —  a  tiny  span 
in  the  vast  cycles  of  time  —  should  have  a  mono- 
poly in  sin  —  the  bye-product  of  personal  free 
will.  If  we  believe,  as  the  Christian  must,  that 
God  is  omnipotent  and  good,  and  yet  permits 
moral  disorder  in  man,  there  is  no  fresh  difficulty 
in  holding  to  his  goodness  and  omnipotence  and 
admitting  that  moral  disorder  exists  in  the  whole 
scheme  of  things  as  we  know  it,  and  beyond  our 
knowledge.  If  A,  out  of  the  wickedness  of  his 
own  heart,  can  do  a  cruel  act  to  his  neighbour, 
and  B  can  yet  believe  that  "God's  in  his  heaven; 
all's  right  with  the  world,"  there  is  no  fresh 
difficulty  for  B  in  believing  that  the  Evil  Will, 
out  of  the  wickedness  of  his  heart,  has  been  at  his 
evil  work  from  the  foundation  of  all  worlds,  causing 
all  the  cataclysms  and  cruelties  of  nature,  while 
yet  God  is  good  and  omnipotent.  It  is  merely 
childish  to  say  the  one  is  tenable,  the  other 
untenable. 

The  dilemma,  "If  God  is,  whence  comes  evil? 
if  he  is  not,  whence  comes  good  ?"  must  remain 
the  philosophic  background  to  all  religious  specula- 
tion.    We  here  assume  that  God  is,  and  that  evil 


174    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

is;  and  we  are  concerned  with  what  appears  to  be 
a  confusion  in  the  minds  of  us  moderns,  who 
believe  that  God  is  the  supreme  personality,  who 
admit  that  there  is  evidence  of  moral  disorder  in 
this  world,  and  yet  adopt  the  idea,  common  now- 
adays, that  to  believe  in  the  Evil  One  is  super- 
stitious. If  we  have  no  better  reason  than  has 
appeared  for  refusing  to  interpret  the  exorcism  of 
Jesus  in  its  natural  sense,  we  do  not  offer  him  the 
respect  which  we  pay  to  any  modern  teacher. 

Further  than  this,  it  would  appear  that  a  belief 
even  in  a  multiplicity  of  devils  is  not  unreasonable 
if  we  believe  in  human  immortality.  It  is  not 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  among  the  spirits  of 
the  dead  there  are  moral  differences  similar  to 
those  that  exist  in  this  life.  Nor  have  we  any 
reason  to  assume  that  the  Evil  Will  may  not  use 
the  worst  of  them  to  influence  the  affairs  of  this 
earth,  through  that  mysterious  connection  between 
mind  and  brain  of  which  we  know  nothing.  As 
long  as  we  frankly  confess  that  we  can  know 
nothing  about  the  influence  of  bad  angels,  and  can 
joyfully  resign  ourselves  to  God's  protection,  we 
need  not  fear  superstition.  There  is  no  more 
need  to  refer  to  the  difficulties  of  a  philosophic 
dualism  in  connection  with  the  speculation  about 
societies  or  kingdoms  of  bad  spirits,  than  in  con- 
nection with  societies  or  kingdoms  of  bad  men 
whom  we  see.  Much  that  must  appear  to  us 
grossly  superstitious  has  been  connected  with  such 
a  belief,  but  this  need  not  condemn  the  belief 
itself.  Let  us  bear  in  mind  that  we  are  speaking 
of  spirit,  not  matter;   we  are  not  referring  to  the 


ch.  i    THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS    175 

creatures  of  the  spiritualist's  imagination  —  crea- 
tures as  grossly  material  as  a  gas  or  a  ray  of  light  or 
a  sound.  It  was  a  superstition  to  believe  that  God 
made  the  world  in  six  days;  but  it  does  not  follow 
that  it  is  a  superstition  to  believe  that  God  made 
the  world.  If  it  is  a  gross  superstition  to  believe 
that  any  invisible  spiritual  being  can  have  direct 
influence  upon  matter  as  we  know  it,  it  does 
not  follow  that  spiritual  intelligences  around  us 
cannot  affect  our  minds,  and  through  our  minds 
our  brains  —  the  nature  of  the  connection  between 
our  own  minds  and  our  brains  being  quite  un- 
known; the  fact  of  that  connection  being  only  an 
object  of  faith  and  a  postulate  of  reason.  Because 
we  realise  that  outside  the  living  organism  spirit 
cannot  affect  matter,  because  we  do  not  believe 
in  poltergeists  throwing  stones,  or  in  spirits  making 
noises,  or  in  any  objective  incarnation  of  a  devil, 
such,  for  example,  as  that  at  which  Luther  aimed 
his  inkpot,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is  impossible 
to  believe  in  evil  spirits  who  might  obtain  posses- 
sion of  mind  in  man  or  brute. 

Let  us  admit,  then,  that  to  believe  in  one 
supreme  Good  as  the  source  and  sustainer  of  all 
does  not  necessarily  exclude  a  belief  in  an  Evil 
Will,  and  in  evil  spirits  controlled  by  him,  who 
may,  for  all  we  know,  work  evil  on  our  minds, 
and  diseases  on  our  bodies  through  our  minds,  and 
all  sorts  of  pain  and  grief  upon  us  through  the 
minds  and  actions  of  other  men.  Wicked  or 
diseased  people  on  earth  can  do  all  this;  why  not 
wicked  spirits  in  the  unseen  ?  But  let  it  be  noted 
that  such  a  belief  limits  the  channel  of  evil  in  this 


176    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

world  to  the  human  mind;  as  far  as  we  have  any 
knowledge  of  moral  evil,  there  only  it  enters  into 
our  experience;  as  far  as  we  have  any  practical 
concern  with  it  thence  it  proceeds.  "Out  of  the 
heart  of  man  proceed  evil  thoughts." 

If  we  believe  in  human  selves  as  apart  from 
bodies,  and  in  immortality,  we  by  this  belief  have 
already  in  the  invisible  world  enormous  multi- 
tudes of  human  spirits.  These  are  not  all  good; 
they  are  not  all  in  one  stage  of  progress;  the 
degrees  in  which  they  are  unrighteous,  and  the 
degrees  in  which  they  may  be  evolving  into  higher 
orders  of  being  or  degenerating,  must  be  almost 
infinitely  various  —  for  evolution  as  we  know  it 
implies  the  progress  of  some  and  the  degeneration 
of  others.  Again,  all  that  we  know  of  human 
spirits  shows  them  to  have  not  only  individual  but 
collective  life.  By  their  very  nature  they  are 
forced  to  form  themselves  into  larger  psychological 
units  —  crowds,  societies,  kingdoms,  hierarchies. 
The  idea  that  at  death  the  human  soul,  naked 
and  alone,  may  aspire  to  hold  communion  with 
none  but  God,  may  be  beautiful,  but  is  foreign  to 
any  reality  we  know.  The  psychic  necessity  of 
loving  the  brother  in  order  to  love  God  probably 
obtains  even  more  perfectly  in  the  spirit  world. 
We  can  hardly  conceive  of  a  humanity  beyond 
the  grave  and  gate  of  death  broken  up  into  the 
naked  and  desolate  condition  of  separate  units. 
Our  spirits  must  cease  to  be  what  we  understand 
as  human  when  they  cease  to  coalesce  in  certain 
common  aspects  of  existence.  Thus  we  are  driven, 
either  to  deny  human  immortality,  or  to  postulate 


ch.  i    THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS    177 

a  change  at  death  so  great  that  it  would  destroy 
the  continuity  of  human  existence,  or  else  to  admit 
the  probability  of  spirits  and  organisations  of  spirits 
bad  enough  and  influential  enough  to  be  spoken 
about  in  such  terms  as  those  in  which  Jesus  spoke 
of  the  kingdom  of  evil. 

Lastly,  as  we  look  upon  the  vast  universe,  the 
myriad  ranks  of  heavenly  bodies  and  the  ordered 
variety  in  vegetable  and  animal  life,  as  our  minds 
attain  in  all  things  to  the  principle,  natura  non 
facit  saltum,  it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  a  world  of 
spirits  in  which  there  is  nothing  at  all  but  the  One 
Supreme  and  Almighty  and  mankind.  It  is  quite 
true  that  man  has  no  absolute  moral  need  to  cast 
the  net  of  his  imagination  over  other  beings  and 
fix  them  in  his  creeds;  but  he  is  forced  to  admit 
the  possibility  of  their  existence,  and  of  their 
varying  moral  character. 

We  thus  see  that,  so  far  from  the  belief  in  a 
kingdom  of  evil  being  foolish,  it  is  an  inference 
consistent  with  our  knowledge  of  self  and  our 
belief  in  God;  and  the  belief  in  bad  spirits  is  a 
fair  inference  from  the  belief  in  human  immortality. 
If  we  get  rid  of  the  ancient  belief  in  the  Evil  One, 
as,  since  the  Reformation,  certain  parts  of  the 
world  have  got  rid  of  the  belief  in  demons,  there 
is  some  evidence  that  we  shall  find  that,  out  of 
our  universities,  out  of  the  very  heart  of  the  latest 
and  most  serious  attempts  to  re-construct  intelligent 
belief  upon  what  some  thinkers  conceive  to  be 
the  ruins  of  Christian  orthodoxy,  the  devils  will 
issue  again. 

We   have,   in   the   region   of  pure   metaphysic, 


178    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

Dr.  M'Taggart's  suggestion  of  an  eternal  plurality 
of  minds.     He  states  his  theory  thus  :  — 

"To  sum  up  — the  self  answers  to  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  fundamental  differentiations  of  the 
Absolute.  Nothing  else  that  we  can  know  or 
imagine  does  so.  The  idea  of  the  self  has  certain 
characteristics  which  can  be  explained  if  the  self 
is  taken  as  one  of  the  fundamental  differentiations 
but  of  which  no  explanation  has  been  offered  on 
any  other  theory,  except  that  of  rejecting  the  idea 
of  the  self  altogether,  and  sinking  into  complete 
scepticism.  The  self  is  so  paradoxical  that  we 
can  find  no  explanation  for  it  except  its  absolute 
reality."  1 

Prof.  Gwatkin  summarises  Dr.  M'Taggart's 
ultimate  theory  in  the  words,  "The  universe  may 
be  a  harmonious  system  of  persons  with  a  tendency 
to  improvement."  2  If  this  be  a  fair  interpreta- 
tion of  the  theory  it  would  seem  quite  possible 
that,  pending  improvement,  some  of  these  eternal 
wills,  including  our  own  and  those  of  our  neigh- 
bours, may  be  devil-like  rather  than  god-like. 

We  find  the  same  suggestion  of  a  plurality  of 
minds  expressed  in  a  concrete  religious  form  by 
Prof.  James :  — 

"The  only  thing  that  religious  experience 
unequivocally  testifies  to  is  that  we  can  experience 
union  with  something  larger  than  ourselves,  and  in 
that  union  find  our  greatest  peace.  Philosophy 
.  .  .  and  mysticism  .  .  .  identify  the  something 
with  a  unique  God  who  is  the  all-inclusive  soul 

1  Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology,  p.  26. 

2  The  Knowledge  of  God,  preface,  p.  ix. 


ch.  i    THE  DEVIL  AND  HIS  ANGELS    179 

of  the  world.  Popular  opinion,  respectful  to 
their  authority,  follows  the  example  which  they 
set.  Meanwhile  ...  all  the  facts  require  is  that 
the  power  should  be  other  and  larger  than  our 
conscious  selves.  Anything  larger  will  do,  if 
only  it  be  large  enough  to  trust  for  the  next  step. 
It  need  not  be  infinite,  it  need  not  be  solitary. 
It  might  conceivably  even  be  only  a  larger  and 
more  godlike  self,  of  which  the  present  self  would 
then  be  but  the  mutilated  expression,  and  the 
universe  might  conceivably  be  a  collection  of  such 
selves,  of  different  degrees  of  inclusiveness,  with 
no  absolute  unity  realised  in  it  at  all.  Thus  would 
a  sort  of  polytheism  return  upon  us."  * 

It  will  here  occur  to  the  reader  that  if  men 
with  a  genius  for  wickedness  are,  like  men  with 
a  genius  for  goodness,  inspired  by  a  larger  power 
which  is  a  super-mundane  self,  that  self,  in  their 
case,  is  not  a  god  but  a  devil.  Indeed,  this  last 
writer  goes  on  to  reply  something  of  the  sort:  — 

"  Upholders  of  the  monistic  view  will  say  to 
such  a  polytheism  that  unless  there  be  one  all- 
inclusive  God,  our  guarantee  of  safety  is  left 
imperfect.  .  .  .  Common  sense  is  less  sweeping  in 
its  demands  than  philosophy  or  mysticism  have 
been  wont  to  be,  and  can  suffer  the  notion  of  this 
world  being  partly  saved  and  partly  lost."  1 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  recent  speculations 
of  men  whom  it  is  not  the  fashion  to  regard  as 
superstitious,  postulate  no  universe  in  which  there 
is  not  ample  space  for  evil  personalities,  transcend- 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  by  Prof.  W.  James,  pp. 
525,  526. 


180     GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

ing  human  beings,  yet  immanent  in  them ;  and 
so  from  another  side  we  are  led  to  think  that 
there  is  nothing  unreasonable  or  superstitious  in 
accepting  such  a  belief  in  the  existence  and 
working  of  an  Evil  World,  and  even  of  an  evil 
hierarchy,  as  the  words  and  acts  of  Jesus,  under- 
stood in  their  plain  sense,  involve.  If  he  did  not 
teach  this  he  used  the  current  doctrine  of  the  devil 
to  teach  a  more  terrible  spiritual  truth,  a  truth 
which  we  can  only  learn  by  giving  the  utmost  heed 
to  the  parable. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    SCORN    OF    SUPERSTITION 

There  is  a  prevalent  opinion  that  the  modern 
man,  having  before  his  eyes  the  triumph  of  the 
scientific  method,  knows  how  to  apply  the  word 
"superstition."  This  is  the  opinion  alike  of  the 
militant  materialist  and  the  average  God-fearing 
man.  How  easily  do  we  moderns  class  together 
bygone  theories  of  the  possibilities  of  mind  and 
matter,  —  astrology,  alchemy,  magic,  and  the  like, 
—  and  whenever  we  find  a  supposed  trace  of  them 
in  the  common  mind  at  present  we  call  it 
"superstition."  In  so  doing  we  show  a  lack  of 
that  necessary  element  of  a  good  modern  educa- 
tion, the  sense  of  the  historic  continuity  and 
oneness  of  the  racial  mind.  This  would  show 
us  that  we  are  only  the  product  of  our  fathers, 
made  of  the  same  matter  and  spirit  as  those  who 
peopled  the  plain  of  Edinu  and  chronicled  in  the 
old  story  the  passionate  fear  that  the  increase  of 
knowledge  would  cause  a  rupture  with  God. 
Their  knowledge  was  only  comparative,  so  is 
ours;  their  opinions  were  immature,  so  are  ours. 
We  find  in  ourselves  their  religious  antagonisms, 

181 


1 8z    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

faith  calling  knowledge  demoniacal,  and  knowledge 
calling  the  search  after  spirit  in  all  things, 
superstitious.  We  also  inherit  from  those  we 
have  called  antediluvian  the  tendency  to  think 
that  we  live  in  the  end  of  time,  that  upon  us  the 
ends  of  the  world  are  come;  by  direct  inheritance 
from  every  generation  of  which  we  have  any 
record  we  come  by  the  idea  that  we  of  the  latest 
half  century  have  acquired  the  secret  of  the  world  ! 

The  effort  after  the  unknown,  the  search  for 
spiritual  power,  has  always  existed;  we  call  the 
earlier  forms  of  it  "superstition";  and  the  reason 
why  these  earlier  forms  of  faith  appear  to  us  more 
absurd  than  they  are  is  that  we  do  not  grasp 
the  reality  in  them.  We  find  in  old  religious 
liturgies  many  sorts  of  impetuous  intellectual 
effort  combined  —  imagination,  religion,  the  power 
of  reasoning  and  observation  of  fact,  all  confused. 
To-day  we  have  differentiated;  we  try  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  functions  of  poetry,  priest- 
hood, theology,  and  science.  But  in  those  high 
civilisations  that  flourished  before  Israel  became 
a  nation  the  man  with  a  religious  vocation  must 
needs  be  poet,  scientist,  theologian,  medicine  man, 
and  priest.  As  man  of  science  he  compiled 
incantations  which  embodied  his  observations  on 
disease  and  misfortune;  as  priest  he  edited  and 
repeated  liturgies;  and  we  find  the  poetry,  the 
piety,  the  material  knowledge  of  the  time,  con- 
fused together. 

Superstition  often  appears  to  differ  from  poetry 
only  by  the  degree  in  which  those  who  speak 
in  figures   perceive  the   difference  between  what 


ch.  ii  THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION   183 

they  speak  of  and  the  figure  in  which  they  clothe 
it.  Keeping  this  distinction  in  mind  we  shall 
perceive  that  in  many  of  its  historic  beliefs  the 
racial  mind  has  expressed  itself  in  figures  by  that 
power  of  natural  imagery  which  is  the  very  mint 
in  which  our  words  are  coined,  and  then  by 
degrees  has  fallen  to  worshipping  the  letter 
which  kills,  producing  thus  a  gross  superstition 
which  a  little  later  it  discards  as  ancestral  folly, 
and  in  the  resulting  effort  to  think  for  itself  the 
racial  mind  again  finds  its  most  ancient  thought 
returning  in  the  disguise  of  a  new  discovery. 

Taking,  for  example,  man's  idea  of  God,  we 
find  that  it  has  gone  through  such  transitions. 
God  spoke;  God  stretched  forth  his  hand;  God 
walked  in  the  garden;  God  drew  his  bow;  God 
wielded  his  sword:  God  appeared  in  fire  and 
cloud.  How  far  the  first  efforts  of  man  to 
express  what  he  knew  to  be  invisible,  what  he 
felt  to  be  transcendent,  were  literal  or  figurative 
we  cannot  tell,  for  he  himself  had  no  distinction 
between  letter  and  figure;  all  his  letters  were 
figures.  But  since  he  was  aware  that  the  sounds 
by  which  he  denoted  earthly  things  denoted  really 
some  name  of  his  own  conferred  on  the  things, 
and  not  the  things  themselves,  —  and  the  figurative 
nature  of  the  earliest  language  has  been  abundantly 
proved  to  us,  —  we  have  little  foundation  for  the 
accusation  that  when  he  first  coined  phrases  to 
express  invisible  power  he  was  deceived  by  them. 
But  as  the  letter  became  more  and  more  sacred, 
the  common  mind  fell  into  the  ruts  of  common 
thought,    and    handed    on    from    generation    to 


1 84    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

generation  superstitions  which  the  seer  —  prophet 
or  priest  or  poet  —  was  for  ever  warring  against 
and  never  vanquishing.  Perhaps  the  latest  phase 
of  this  long  battle  is  its  best  illustration,  because 
it  is  the  one  most  familiar  to  us.  How  necessary 
and  desirable  in  the  course  of  last  century  was 
the  sceptical  protest  against  a  very  small  and 
crude  explanation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
and  the  "plan  of  salvation"  then  rife!  The 
most  lovely  and  gracious  figures  of  Hebrew 
poetry,  of  the  parables  of  Jesus,  of  the  Christian 
mystics,  or  Christian  poets  had  become  to  the 
common  religious  mind  like  the  dolls  or  tin 
soldiers  of  a  nursery  play-box,  and  were  set  out 
and  made  to  go  through  their  paces  in  the 
homilies  of  almost  every  Catholic  and  Protestant 
divine.  Science  had  opened  up  illimitable  regions 
never  before  discerned.  We  looked  for  the  first 
time  down  the  immeasurable  ages  of  our  geological 
past,  and  peered  into  a  future  measured  only  by 
the  slow  cooling  of  the  sun;  we  saw  into  the 
depths  of  the  universe  as  it  floated  across  the 
strongest  telescope,  measuring  its  space  by  the 
transmission  of  light,  and  into  the  infinite  grada- 
tions of  perfect  organisms  which  the  strongest 
microscope  disclosed.  Was  it  any  wonder  that 
the  Power  which  could  perfect  the  irides- 
cence on  the  wing  of  an  insect  too  small  for 
the  natural  eye,  which  could  shepherd  the  whirl 
of  suns  whose  light  when  it  reached  us  had  left 
them  a  century  before,  which  had  brought  all 
things  into  existence  by  the  millennial  processes 
of  evolution,  —  was  it  any  wonder  that  such   a 


ch.  ii  THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION   185 

Power  appeared  to  be  most  inadequately  described 
in  a  literal  acceptance  of  the  machinery  of  Dante 
or  Milton,  by  the  theologies  of  Wesley  or 
Newman  or  Jonathan  Edwards  ?  Even  "the  sin- 
less years  that  breathed  beneath  the  Syrian  blue" 
appeared  to  have  but  an  unimportant  connection 
with  the  Creator  and  Sustainer  of  the  new 
immensities  of  creation.  To  the  Unitarian  the 
idea  of  the  infinite  fostering  love  of  a  Creator 
seemed  belittled  by  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation; 
to  the  scientist  the  idea  of  infinite  force  seemed 
the  most  adequate  to  express  ultimate  reality; 
and  from  both  standpoints  the  minds  of  many 
easily  escaped  into  the  idea  that  any  suggestion 
of  personality  was  belittling  to  God,  that  it  was 
more  reverent,  as  well  as  more  appropriate,  to 
conceive  God  in  terms  of  force,  or  by  means  of 
infinite  attributes,  in  so  far  as  we  conceived  him 
at  all.  These  were  large  ideas;  they  carried 
one  generation  of  thinkers  into  an  airy  place 
where  they  could  turn  and  think  with  fine  scorn 
of  all  they  called  "anthropomorphic  religion." 
But  soon  came  revulsion  from  that  first  boyish 
materialism  of  scientific  progress,  and  men  of 
science  were  carried  back  in  the  direction  of 
idealism,  reverting  to  thought  instead  of  sense 
as  the  basis  of  knowledge;  while  the  religious 
thought  of  those  who  had  never  bowed  the  knee 
to  materialism,  leaving  those  things  that  were 
behind  and  pressing  forward,  as  thought  always 
must  in  trying  to  discover  wherein  for  man 
reality  consists,  found  it  only  within  the  self;  and 
with  this  general  change  of  philosophic  attitude 


186    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

came  a  fresh  reverence  for  the  manifestation  of 
God  as  a  Person. 

The  only  reality  which  man  cannot  think  away, 
the  only  force  which  he  cannot  conceive  in  terms 
of  weight  or  measure,  is  personality.  All  else  of 
which  we  can  think,  such  as  matter,  force,  life,  in 
any  sense  in  which  we  can  conceive  them,  can, 
now  one,  now  another,  in  thought  be  measured 
and  eliminated  at  will;  the  thought  that  measures 
and  eliminates  remains,  an  unmeasurable  power. 
The  thought,  its  way  of  directing  itself,  its  way 
of  impressing  itself,  is  personality.  The  only 
personality  that  comes  within  the  range  of  reasoned 
knowledge  is  human;  the  existence  of  God  is  an 
inference  of  faith;  and  we  attribute  to  him  our 
conception  of  this  ultimate  reality.  Of  infinity 
and  all  its  attributes  we  can  have  no  conception, 
although  we  image  to  ourselves  the  huge  or  the 
interpenetrating  or  the  irresistible;  but  it  is  a 
dangerous  business  to  bow  down  to  mere  images  of 
anything  in  heaven  above  or  in  the  earth  beneath, 
even  magnified  by  our  conception  of  infinity. 
Our  only  real  choice  lies  between  attributing  to 
God  either  one  set  of  personal  attributes  or 
another;  and  all  who  admit  that  in  the  character 
of  Jesus  we  have  the  ideal  human  personality 
must  attribute  that  character  to  God. 

To  sketch,  even  as  slightly  as  in  the  foregoing 
paragraph  we  have  sketched,  the  history  of  the 
notion  of  God,  the  many  beliefs  that  have  under- 
gone similar  transitions,  would  take  too  long;  but 
let  us  pass  to  that  fantastic  "superstition"  with 
which  we  are  immediately  concerned,  which  ascribed 


ch.  ii  THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION  187 

all  disease  in  men  and  animals  to  the  intrusion  and 
indwelling  of  certain  mischievous  entities  that 
we  call  demons.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the 
absurdities  of  demonology,  and  the  magical  rites 
that  were  used  as  prevention  and  cure.  When 
we  roam  at  large  among  all  these  strange  fancies, 
we  find,  among  much  that  seems  senseless,  some 
significant  facts.  The  forefathers  of  our  intellect, 
they  who  made  the  alphabets  of  all  our  learning, 
thought  that  the  disease-demons  frequented  solitary 
places  and  dry  places  —  the  solitudes  of  the  Eastern 
desert.1  Picture  these  places,  —  desert  highways 
often  strewn  with  the  slaughter  of  the  sun  which 
strikes  at  mid-day,  or  waterless  caverns,  where  the 
beasts,  seeking  shade  and  hiding,  lie  down  to  die, 
or  stony  rock-ledges  of  the  mountains  which  men 
chose  for  tombs.  In  such  places,  when  the  wind 
raised  the  dust-cloud,  it  was  dangerous  to  go  far. 
A  demon  passing  in  the  air  and  striking  against  a 
man  had  no  choice  but  to  enter  in  and  multiply 
within  him.2  After  being  in  such  a  place  a  man 
must  perform  ablutions  as  well  as  say  his  prayers, 
for  the  demons  of  dry  places  hated  water.3     Or 

1  "The  plague  demon  in  the  desert  like  a  cloud  of  dust  makes 
his  way  .  .  .  though  he  hath  neither  hands  nor  feet,  ever  goes 
round  and  round."  Translation  of  magical  text,  Appendix  III., 
Sayce's  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  477. 

2  "The  demons  stumble  upon  their  victims,  as  it  were,  and 
strike  whomsoever  they  happen  to  encounter."  (From  Maklu 
series  of  tablets  quoted  by  M.  Jastrow  Jr.,  in  art.  "Religion  of 
Babylonia";  see  extra  vol.  of 'Hastings' 's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible.) 

3  I  have  washed  my  hands,  cleansed  my  body, 

With  the  pure  waters  of  a  source  that  arises  in  Eridu. 

Whatever  is  evil,  whatever  is  not  good, 

That  is  lodged  in  my  body,  in  my  flesh,  in  my  limbs.     {Ibid.) 


1 88    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

again,  in  deep  shades  of  forests  the  disease-demons 
were  rife,  especially  at  sunset  or  at  dew-fall  and 
until  the  sunrise.  Crowded  market  or  inn  was  a 
place  of  danger.  These  demons  could  enter  into 
a  man  with  the  air  he  breathed,  with  the  water  or 
milk  he  drank,  or  with  the  meat  he  ate.1  One 
human  being  could  infect  another  with  them  by 
breath,  by  spittle,  or  by  the  presence  necessary  for 
a  mere  look.2  Especially  wTas  the  embrace  of  the 
harlot-witch  dangerous,  the  wound  of  a  bull's  horn, 
or  the  bite  of  an  animal.  The  dog  kind,  the  serpent 
kind,  or  —  let  us  note  —  the  mosquito  kind,  were 
more  apt  than  others  to  convey  the  disease- 
demon. 

There  were  many  full-blown  fancies  about  the 
monstrous  appearance  of  these  demons,  such 
fancies  as  always  gather  about  the  invisible;  or 
about  their  nature,  as  that  they  were  the  souls  of 
dead  men;  but  from  the  sum  of  all  the  incanta- 
tions against  them  we  gather  that  these  imaginative 
additions  to  the  doctrine  had  no  general  authority. 
No  shape  or  size  is  really  attributed  to  disease- 
demons,  for  they  could  dwell  in  hand  or  foot  or 
eye,  nay,  they  could  multiply  and  swarm  in  any 

1  "All  sickness  was  ascribed  to  demoniacal  possession;  the 
demon  had  been  eaten  with  the  food  and  drunk  with  the  water, 
or  breathed  in  with  the  air,  and  until  he  could  be  expelled  there 
was  no  chance  of  recovery."  (Sayce's  Hibbert  Lectures,  Lect. 
IV.,  p.  310.     See  also  Lect.  V.,  p.  330.) 

2  "The  witch's  spittle  is  poisonous,  and  can  torture  one  on 
whom  it  falls  or  whoever  treads  on  it."  (M.  Jastrow  in  art. 
"Religion  of  Babylonia,"  in  extra  vol.  of  Hastings's  Dictionary 
of  the  Bible.) 


ch.  ii   THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION   189 

member  of  the  body,  and  they  could  be  drawn  out 
by  way  of  the  nose  or  the  mouth.1 

These  beliefs  concerning  disease-demons  seem 
to  have  prevailed  from  all  time;  in  the  ages  before 
the  patriarchs  they  were  well  developed.  They 
continued  to  be  prevalent  in  Christendom  till  the 
period  of  the  Reformation,  and  then  still  prevailed 
among  the  unlettered,  knowing  no  distinction  of 
Protestant  or  Papist.  Then,  as  we  know,  came 
a  period  of  great  light,  when  among  the  learned 
no  superstition  appeared  so  paltry  as  that  attribut- 
ing diseases  to  invisible  living  creatures  which 
could  be  inhaled  with  the  air,  or  drunk  or  eaten, 
which  entered  into  men  from  the  dry  dust  as  it 
rode  on  the  wind,  or  from  the  bite  of  creatures 
that  fly  or  creep  in  the  night.  But  Heaven  did 
not  permit  men  a  long  interval  of  such  dry  light, 
for  the  tale  of  the  disease-demons  soon  issued 
again  from  the  very  places  whence  it  had  first  been 
cast  out  with  contumely  —  from  the  laboratory 
and  the  library.  We  may  further  remark  that 
the  popular  imagination  concerning  the  germs  of 
disease  is  still  as  remote  from  the  actual  facts 
revealed  by  the  microscope  as  if  it  still  clothed 
them  in  the  anthropomorphic  language  of  uncon- 
scious poetry;  nor  is  the  scientist  any  nearer  an 
explanation  of  the  mystery  of  the  life  which 
animates  them  and  us  than  were  the  framers  of 
the  earliest  magical  incantations. 

Yet   how   often  we   have   heard   of  the   happy 

1  See  Josephus,  Antiquities,  Book  VIII.,  chap.  ii.  5;  and  for 
Jewish  familiarity  with  Gentile  demonology  see  Cheyne,  Introd. 
to  Isaiah,  p.  210. 


1 90    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

relief  from  demonism  that  our  modern  enlighten- 
ment gives  to  the  mind  !  Indeed,  many  are  so 
impressed  with  the  importance  of  this  relief  that 
they  point  to  religion  as  the  evil  mania  which  fills 
our  atmosphere  with  terrors  of  the  unseen.  One 
of  their  stock  objections  to  the  gospel  is  what  they 
call  its  "demonology";  yet,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
there  was  a  great  deal  in  the  ancient  belief  as 
to  the  causes  of  disease  which  has  recently  been 
confirmed  by  the  bacteriologist.  Are  we  not  now 
afraid  of  the  dust  of  dry  places  ?  Do  we  not  fear 
the  night  of  malarial  districts,  when  the  gnats  and 
beasts,  infected  by  malaria,  are  abroad  and  seeking 
prey  ?  How  could  we  better  describe  the  attitude 
of  man  to  the  microbe  than  in  these  spirited  lines, 
an  incantation  to  drive  away  the  disease-demon, 
from  the  fifth  tablet  of  the  Maklu  series  ?  — 


Away,  away,  far  away,  far  away. 

For  shame,  for  shame,  fly  away,  fly  away. 

Round  about  face,  go  away,  far  away. 

Out  of  my  body,  away. 

Out  of  my  body,  far  away. 

Out  of  my  body,  for  shame. 

Out  of  my  body,  fly  away. 

Out  of  my  body,  round  about  face. 

Out  of  my  body,  go  away. 

Into  my  body  do  not  return. 

To  my  body  draw  not  nigh. 

To  my  body  do  not  approach. 

Into  my  body  do  not  force  your  way. 

My  body  torture  not.1 

1  Art.  "Religion  of  Babylonia,"  by  M.  Jastrow  Jr.,  in  extra 
vol.  of  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 


ch.  ii  THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION  191 

We  do  not  believe  in  wizard  or  witch,  but  we 
believe  in  infection  and  contagion,  which  obey 
laws  very  similar  to  the  supposed  methods  of 
witchcraft.  The  ancients  also  arrived  at  the 
conclusion  that  certain  human  beings  had  a 
peculiar  power  of  infecting  their  neighbours  with 
demons;  just  as  to-day,  if  we  had  no  idea  of 
the  laws  that  govern  infection  and  contagion, 
we  might  suppose,  after  careful  observation,  that 
people  suffering  from  infectious  or  contagious 
disease,  and  able  to  go  about,  were  endowed  with 
a  spiritual  power  of  doing  mischief  to  their  neigh- 
bours. Can  we  find  a  better  description  of  one 
going  about  in  the  last  feverish  stage  of  tubercular 
disease  than  the  following  lines  from  the  third 
tablet  of  the  same  series  ?  — 

Who  art  thou,  witch, 

Who  carries  the  word  of  my  misfortune  in  her  heart, 

Whose  tongue  brings  about  my  destruction, 

Through  whose  lips  I  am  poisoned, 

In  whose  footsteps  death  follows  ? * 

The  whole  theory  of  demoniacal  possession  was 
historically  a  survival  of  primitive  animism ;  so  is 
our  theory  of  God  and  of  immortality,  of  justice 
and  of  mercy.  All  these  had  their  almost  indis- 
tinguishable beginnings  in  the  earliest  progressive 
religion  of  which  we  can  find  any  trace;  all  these 
lie  like  unused,  atrophied  organs  within  the  most 
decadent  religions  we  can  investigate.  That  a 
belief  is  a  survival  of  animism  does  not  prove  it 

1  Art.  "Religion  of  Babylonia,"  by  M.  Jastrow  Jr.,  in  extra 
vol.  of  Hastings's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 


192    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

false;  but  the  fancies  of  animism  prove  how  prone 
human  nature  is  to  invest  any  power  that  it  does 
not  understand  with  fantastic  attributes.  Indeed, 
at  the  present  day  there  is  a  rapidly  growing 
imagination  concerning  the  deadly  nature  of 
disease  germs,  which  makes  them  loom  large  out 
of  all  proportion  to  other  facts  of  life,  and  bids  fair 
to  be  a  superstition  as  paralysing  as  any  that 
troubled  the  ancient  world.  The  case  of  the 
wretched  city  clerk  who  was  starving  because  he 
had  dispensed  with  almost  every  article  of  diet, 
fearful  lest  each  in  turn  might  be  infected  by 
noxious  germs,  is  not  a  worse  instance  of  exagger- 
ated fancies  that  amount  to  superstition  than  is 
that  of  the  millionaire  who  isolated  his  children 
from  all  wholesome  companionship  for  fear  of 
infection.  To  such  men  the  microbe  is  a  veritable 
monster.  Such  terrors  give  rise  to  imaginary 
shapes  of  undue  proportion;  stern  truth  can 
make  small  headway  against  them  when  popular; 
the  best  antidote  is  a  rival  imagery  of  quack 
medicines  and  patent  germicides,  by  exaggeration 
equally  false  to  fact. 

Many  superstitions  may  be  effete,  but  we  are 
not  yet  able  completely  to  distinguish  between  the 
follies  and  the  true  insight  of  our  ancestors. 
Much  that  we  have  sometimes  thought  divine 
revelation  has  proved  with  larger  knowledge  to  be 
puerile;  1  much  that  we  think  puerile  may  prove 
our  wisdom.  Since  we  have  found  the  equivalent 
of  disease-demons  in  the  microcosms  that  cause  so 
many  of  our  bodily  ailments,  we  should  do  well  to 

1  E.g.,  Regulations  concerning  die  Hebrew  taboo. 


ch.  ii    THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION   193 

realise  that  the  glib  statement  that  demoniacal 
possession  was  a  mere  fancy,  is  not  a  sign  of  great 
scholarship  or  great  wisdom.  Suspense  of  judg- 
ment is  the  wiser  attitude  toward  the  belief,  so 
long  held  by  the  world-mind,  that  afflictions  of 
the  spirit  may  be  caused  by  some  external  spiritual 
influence. 

Let  us  not  be  misunderstood.  All  the  facts 
of  experience  —  so-called  material  facts,  so-called 
mental  facts  — alike  have  to  be  accounted  for  in 
the  philosophy  of  every  inquiring  mind.  Accord- 
ing to  a  man's  ultimate  assumptions  will  be  the 
explanation  that  satisfies  him.  Naturalism,  whose 
postulate  is  that  physical  phenomena  are  our 
primary  facts,  traces  physical  sequences  of  cause 
and  effect,  and  from  its  point  of  view  any  fact  is 
"explained"  when  its  place  is  assigned  in  such  a 
sequence.  The  physicist  seeks  no  further  explana- 
tion, for  he  has  found  all  he  started  to  find.  The 
psychologist,  in  the  same  scientific  spirit,  studies 
the  facts  of  mind;  he  perceives  their  strict 
correlation  with  physical  facts ;  but  he  may  decide, 
as  our  leading  English  psychologist  x  does,  that  he 
cannot  resolve  the  sequence  of  mental  facts  into 
the  physical  sequence,  and  regard  the  one  as  the 
mere  collateral  product  of  the  other.  Then  he  is 
driven  to  ask  the  question,  "May  it  not  be  that 
the  physicist  deals  only  with  the  utterances  of 
what  we  may  call  the  insides  of  things  ?"  2  Is 
not  the  mechanical  explanation  of  the  world  an 
abstraction  from  the  actual  world  in  which  we  live 

1  Dr.  James  Ward. 
2  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  by  Dr.  Ward3  vol.  ii.  p.  81. 
o 


i94    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

and  struggle  ?  The  inquirer  who  reaches  this  point 
may  proceed  to  postulate  mind  as  the  prior  and 
fundamental  reality.  Starting  from  that  postu- 
late he  sees  that  "the  material  and  mechanical 
is  not  fundamental,  but  that  the  teleological  and 
spiritual  underlie  it  and  are  pre-supposed  by  it."  * 
With  his  idealistic  hypothesis  he  views  the  facts  of 
experience  in  another  light.  He  does  not  deny 
the  physicist's  knowledge  so  far  as  it  goes,  but  he 
starts  with  an  assumption  that  enables  him,  as  he 
conceives,  to  understand  the  facts  of  experience 
more  completely,  to  give  a  deeper  explanation 
of  them. 

Let  us  suppose  that  speculative  philosophy  and 
practical  religion  push  a  man  to  postulate,  not 
merely  intelligence  but  a  Supreme  Intelligence,  as 
the  only  sufficient  reason  of  creation;  and  suppose 
him  further  to  find  that  experience,  the  source  of 
all  knowledge,  points  to  the  existence  of  an  evil 
principle,  subordinate  no  doubt  to  the  Supreme 
Will,  yet  able  to  will,  and  to  act  on  the  human 
mind,  in  contravention  of  the  Supreme  Will;  such 
hypothesis  will  give  him  a  new  standpoint  from 
which  to  view  the  facts  of  experience,  but  it  will 
not  lead  him  to  contradict  or  deny  the  physical 
explanation  of  experience,  or  the  other  and  ad- 
ditional explanation  offered  by  the  philosopher  who 
insists  on  the  prior  reality  of  mind.  Our  inquirer 
is  unable  to  find  any  account  of  the  facts  of 
existence  satisfying  to  himself  unless  he  postulate 
something  other  than  they  can  teach  him  as  to  the 
nature  of  supreme  reality.   His  difference  with  the 

1  Ibid.  p.  253. 


ch.  ii  THE  SCORN  OF  SUPERSTITION  195 

mere  physicist  does  not  lead  him  to  deny  that  the 
physicist  has  any  explanation  to  offer;  there  can 
be  no  question  that  every  fact  of  experience  can 
have  its  physical  cause  and  consequence  pointed 
out.  Much  less  does  it  lead  him  to  deny  the 
idealist  philosophy.  The  question  for  him  is 
whether  these  truths  are  the  most  satisfactory 
explanation  he  can  reach. 

To  return,  what  do  we  know  about  demoniacal 
possession  ?  Body  we  know,  and  the  disease-germs 
of  the  body  we  know;  functional  disorders  or 
organic  changes  we  know  to  be  the  concomitants 
of  all  nervous  or  mental  troubles.  Mind  apart 
from  body  we  do  not  know;  we  do  not  know 
what  influences  of  outer  spirit  may  work  upon 
incarnate  spirit,  and  be  the  cause  of  those  so-called 
hysterical  disorders  affecting  the  moral  and  spiritual 
nature  for  which  the  religious  mind  hardly  finds 
adequate  cause  in  brain  or  nerve.  Our  conten- 
tion is  that  the  hypothesis  which  Jesus  seemed  to 
countenance  in  explanation  has  nothing  incredible 
in  it. 

We  have  certainly  made  progress  in  knowledge. 
Every  one  who  believes  that  good  lies  at  the  heart 
of  things  must  believe  that  this  progress  is  real 
and,  even  if  chequered,  will  be  continuous.  At 
the  same  time  we  know  that  at  the  beginning 
and  at  the  end  of  every  known  sequence  of  fact 
or  thought  lies  the  unknown.  Different  epochs 
produce  different  theories  with  regard  to  the 
borderlands  of  knowledge ;  farther  off  there  is  not 
even  theory  to  support  thought.  It  is  only  those 
who   lack  the   power  to  learn  from  history  who 


196    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

think  that  the  tendency  of  thought  for  one  age, 
although  pointing  for  some  time  in  one  direction, 
necessarily  points  to  finality.  Our  progress  is 
rather  to  be  observed  in  the  ceaseless  shifting  of 
opposing  races  and  schools.  The  progress  of  our 
knowledge  is  like  an  apocalyptic  vision;  always, 
everywhere,  we  have  doctrine  warring  against 
doctrine  and  theory  against  theory,  men's  hearts 
failing  them  because  the  very  foundations  of  their 
thought  are  shaken.  In  the  gloom  of  each  conflict 
to  some  God  seems  gone  from  heaven;  the  periodic 
pulse  of  things,  by  which  order  is  held  out  of  chaos, 
beats  low,  and  parts  of  knowledge  that  seemed  as 
steadfast  as  the  stars  in  the  firmament  are  lost. 
That  which  emerges  out  of  the  din  and  darkness 
is  the  wiser  man,  not  with  higher  powers  but  with 
wider  opportunity.  He  knows  that  if  he  goes 
backward  he  fails.  He  must  press  forward;  yet, 
as  he  goes,  something  in  the  creeds  that  he  thinks 
to  be  dead  rises  and  meets  him  after  many  days, 
like  a  child  advancing  from  the  dawn  of  the 
morning. 


CHAPTER   III 


THE    PERMANENT    NEED    OF    '  EXORCISM' 


Jesus  gave  a  large  part  of  his  ministry  to  the 
restoration  of  free  will  in  those  to  whom  it  was 
lost.  He  chose  to  restore  self-control  to  reputed 
demoniacs,  not  as  he  healed  those  suffering  from 
other  diseases,  but  by  addressing,  or  appearing  to 
address,  some  extraneous  spiritual  entity  within 
them.  They  had  lost  self-control,  and  he  could 
not  ask  them  for  personal  faith;  but  why  should 
he  not  have  restored  them  to  self-possession  as  he 
restored  the  dead  to  life,  without  assuming  the 
position  of  the  exorcist  ?  It  is  the  apparent 
assumption  by  Jesus  of  this  role,  his  apparent 
acceptance  of  the  current  belief  that  the  indwelling 
demons  were  living  subjects  of  the  kingdom  of 
evil,  that  marks  off  these  marvels  of  healing  as  a 
distinct  class. 

Several  theories  are  advanced  to  account  for 
the  action  of  Jesus.  One  theory  would  admit  that 
possession  by  demons  was  real  in  those  times,  but 
would  say  it  was  local  and  temporary.  We  may 
dismiss  this  view  as  intolerable.  Whatever  was 
the  cause  of  diseases  affecting  the  volitional  power 

197 


198    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

then  must  be  the  cause  of  them  now.  The  forms 
of  our  diseases  change  with  our  conditions  —  e.g., 
the  Black  Plague  common  in  the  past  was  a  worse 
scourge  than  influenza;  but  no  such  extraordinary 
change  has  come  over  the  race  as  that  epidemics 
might  be  caused  by  intrusive  disease-germs  at  one 
period  in  man's  history,  and  be  independent  of  any 
disease-germ  in  another  period.  In  the  same 
way,  there  is  certainly  no  such  radical  difference 
in  human  conditions  as  to  make  possible  so  extra- 
ordinary and  so  enormous  a  change  as  this  —  that 
control  of  the  human  will  should  in  the  first 
century  have  been  assumed  at  times  by  a  foreign 
and  mischievous  will  belonging  to  some  low  form 
of  spirit  life,  and  in  the  twentieth  century  men 
should  be  liable  to  no  such  accidents. 

Another  theory  is  that  God,  having  put  on  our 
flesh  and  its  attendant  circumstance,  also  accepted 
the  ignorance  and  superstition  of  his  age,  and 
believed  in  an  arch-devil  and  in  minor  demons 
because  his  neighbours  did,  and  not  because  such 
ideas  represented  truth.  Whether  Jesus  accepted 
the  limitations  of  his  age  in  mundane  matters  it  is 
of  less  importance  for  us  to  decide;  but  if  he  had 
no  higher  degree  of  insight  than  others  into  the 
unseen  world  we  can  only  learn  from  him  as  from 
any  other  great  ethical  teacher.  All  mystics  claim 
direct  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  spirit  world ;  and 
if  Jesus  has  anything  to  impart  to  us  which  we 
could  not  discover  for  ourselves  from  physical  fact 
and  reasoned  induction,  he  must  have  it  by  in- 
tuitive cognisance  of  the  conditions  of  our  spiritual 
life. 


chap,  in       NEED    OF    'EXORCISM'  199 

Another  view  seems  to  be  that  Jesus  addressed 
the  demon  because  that  was  the  only  method  that 
carried  conviction  of  the  cure  to  minds  convinced 
of  the  reality  of  demon  possession.  We  take  a 
passage  from  Prof.  Harnack's  What  is  Christianity? 
which  countenances  this  view :  — 

"The  notion  of  people  being  'possessed'  was 
current  everywhere ;  nay,  even  the  science  of  the 
time  looked  upon  a  whole  section  of  morbid 
phenomena  in  this  light.  But  the  consequence  of 
these  phenomena  being  explained  as  meaning  that 
some  evil  and  invisible  power  had  taken  possession 
of  a  man,  was  that  mental  affections  took  forms 
which  looked  as  if  an  alien  being  had  really  entered 
into  the  soul.  There  is  nothing  paradoxical  in 
this.  If  modern  science  were  to  declare  nervous 
disease  to  consist,  in  great  part,  of  'possession,' 
and  the  newspapers  were  to  spread  this  announce- 
ment amongst  the  public,  the  same  thing  would 
recur.  We  should  soon  have  numerous  cases  in 
which  nervous  patients  looked  as  if  they  were  in 
the  grip  of  an  evil  spirit,  and  themselves  believed 
that  they  were  so.  .  .  .  The  best  means  of 
encountering  these  forms  of  mental  disease  is 
to-day,  as  it  was  formerly,  the  influence  of  a 
strong  personality.  It  is  able  to  threaten  and 
subdue  the  'devil,'  and  so  heal  the  patient."  1 

We  would  suggest  that  to  make  the  belief  of 
the  patient  that  he  was  possessed  by  an  alien 
spirit  the  essential  characteristic  of  those  cases 
treated  by  Jesus  as  demoniacal,  is  untrue  to  the 
record.     Our  Lord  appears  to  have  used  a  com- 

1  What  is  Christianity?  pp.  60,  61. 


200    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

mand  to  the  alien  spirit  as  the  means  of  cure  in 
cases  of  children  and  maniacs,  where  one  cannot 
suppose  the  patient  to  have  been  capable  of  hold- 
ing any  theory  about  his  own  affliction.  When 
Jesus  said  to  the  Syrophenician,  "The  devil  is 
gone  out  of  thy  daughter/'  he  did  not  use  that 
expression  for  the  sake  of  impressing  the  daughter. 
Further,  to  suppose  an  hallucination  on  the  part 
of  the  patient  and  his  friends  to  lie  at  the  root  of 
the  question,  and  to  be  the  only  reason  of  the 
method  used  by  Jesus  in  treating  hysterical  dis- 
orders, is,  in  the  face  of  all  we  know  of  such 
disorders,  a  superficial  view.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
we  know  that  all  through  human  history  man  has 
been  liable  to  all  sorts  of  nervous  or  hysterical 
compulsions,  of  which  the  essential  characteristic 
is  loss  of  self-control,  not,  and  most  emphatically 
not,  his  knowledge  that  self-control  has  been  lost. 

Jesus  found  in  the  men  of  his  time  many 
beliefs  concerning  the  spirit-world  and  man's 
relation  to  it.  To  some  of  these  beliefs  he  set 
the  seal  of  his  authority;  some  he  set  aside  as 
negligible;  some  he  denied.  He  certainly  taught 
much  less  concerning  this  adjacent  world  than 
most  people  suppose.  There  are  but  two  reverent 
and  rational  explanations  of  his  attitude  to  the 
demonology  of  his  time.  Either  he  must  have 
wished  to  endorse  as  truth  such  part  of  the  popular 
belief  as  he  incorporated  into  his  own  ministry,  or 
he  must  have  used  it  as  a  parable  to  convey  a  truth 
concerning  the  loss  of  volitional  freedom  that  was 
of  the  utmost  importance  for  us  to  learn. 

It  is  worth  while  to  study  carefully  the  belief 


chap,  in       NEED    OF   '  EXORCISM'  201 

in    possession    as    countenanced    by    Jesus.      His 
belief  in    demoniacal    possession    has    nothing   in 
common    with    the    modern    superstitions    which 
accrete  themselves  round  such  terms  as  "ghosts," 
"spirit  control,"  "poltergeist,"  etc.    We  have  no 
need  to  think  of  shades  hovering  in  the  air.     Two 
salient  features  in  the  attitude  of  Jesus  contrast 
with  many  notions  we  have  been  accustomed  to 
associate  with  it.     First,  he  seems  to  have  attached 
no  moral  blame  to  the  condition  of  being  demon- 
ised ;  his  words  concerning  certain  physical  diseases 
may  possibly  imply  that  they  were  brought  on  by 
sin,    but    there    is    no    suggestion    of  this    in    his 
dealing  with  the  poor  wretches  whom  by  exorcism 
he  set  free  as  from  a  degrading  servitude.     The 
second  point  is  that  he  gives  no  colour  to  the  idea 
that  the   demons  had   human   personality.     It  is 
true   that   when   he   cured   these   cases   he   never 
spoke  to  the  sufferer;   he  commanded  the  demon; 
so  that,   if  his   action   is   not   a   parable,   there   is 
evidence  that  he  thought  he  perceived  an  indwell- 
ing   spirit   with    so    much    of  intelligence    that   it 
could  obey  a  command.     But  we  can  command 
many  animals  by  word  or  by  mere  presence;    we 
do    not    therefore    suppose    them    to    have    the 
attributes    of   human    personality.     That    he    re- 
garded demons  as  impersonal  must  be  obvious  to 
those    who    mark    with    what    dignity    our    Lord 
invested   the   human   spirit,   either   saved   or  lost, 
and  what  indignity  he  meted  out  to  demons.     All 
that  is  necessarily  implied  in  the  method  of  Jesus 
in  these  cases  is  that  there  are  low  forms  of  spirit- 
life  capable  of    some  degree  of    intelligence   and 


202    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  in 

volition,  able  to  attack  and  injure  the  powers  of 
the  human  spirit,  as  a  germ  of  physical  disease 
may,  with  or  without  their  concomitance,  attack 
and  injure  the  powers  of  the  human  body. 

In  the  facts  of  life  before  us  there  is  much  that 
appears  to  harmonise  with  such  a  belief.  There  is 
an  analogy  between  the  infectious  diseases  of  the 
body  and  those  nervous  affections  which  impair 
self-control  but  stop  short  of  insanity  proper.  Just 
as  the  bacterial  germ  passes  from  body  to  body, 
spreading  physical  disease,  so  does  a  malign  spirit 
seem  to  pass  from  mind  to  mind  and  even  from 
animal  to  human  mind.  Nervous  diseases  are 
always  catching  and  often  epidemic.  They  have 
produced  the  wTorst  epidemics  the  world  has 
known,  just  as  bodily  diseases  are  rife  when 
human  beings  live  in  close  air,  dirt,  and  want  of 
healthy  exercise;  so  when  they  live  in  ignorance, 
moral  turpitude,  and  lack  of  intellectual  interests, 
do  mental  ailments  prevail;  and  this  is  the  effect 
even  when  every  physical  advantage  is  possessed. 

Let  us  cite  a  few  of  these  mental  epidemics. 

There  is  what  is  called  "The  Children's 
Crusade." 

"In  whole  large  districts  of  Europe  young 
children,  who  belonged  to  a  generation  born  when 
the  population  had  been  decimated  by  the  Cru- 
sades, rushed  from  the  towns  in  troops,  and,  join- 
ing others  on  the  highways,  marched  day  after  day, 
they  knew  not  where  or  why,  but,  as  they  said, 
bound  for  Jerusalem.  They  begged  their  food  as 
they  passed,  but  would  be  controlled  by  no  one. 
The  King  of  France  issued  a  personal  edict  to  the 


chap,  m       NEED    OF    'EXORCISM'  203 

children,  but  neither  in  France  nor  Germany  could 
the  epidemic  be  allayed.  Persuasions,  threats, 
punishments,  were  as  futile  as  the  king's  com- 
mand. Bolts  and  bars  could  not  hold  the  children. 
If  shut  up,  they  broke  through  doors  and  windows, 
and  rushed  to  take  their  places  in  the  processions 
which  they  saw  passing  by.  If  the  children  were 
detained  so  that  escape  was  impossible  they  pined 
away."  1 

We  know  how  far  they  went,  and  in  what 
numbers,  and  to  what  destruction.  Neither  the 
physical  nor  psychological  explanations,  although 
true  as  far  as  they  go,  seem  to  exhaust  the 
matter. 

Take,  again,  the  crusade  against  the  Albigenses  : 

"According  to  Albert  von  Stade,  a  peculiar 
religious  mania  broke  out  among  women;  thou- 
sands of  them,  stark  naked  and  in  deep  silence,  as 
if  stricken  with  dumbness,  ran  frantically  about  the 
streets.  In  Luttich  many  of  them  fell  into  con- 
vulsions of  ecstasy."  2 

The  epidemic  which  offers  an  apparent  refuta- 
tion of  Professor  Harnack's  argument  is  the 
mania  of  witchcraft,  a  mental  fever  which  raged 
in  Europe  for  almost  two  centuries.  In  this 
mania  we  see  the  sort  of  possession  which 
Professor  Harnach  has  in  mind  —  hundreds  of 
people  of  all  ages  and  classes,  accused  of  being 
possessed  with  devils,  usually  coming  to  believe 
that  they  were  so  possessed,  confessing  to 
possession,    and    acting    in    accordance   with   the 

1  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  by  Boris  Sidis,  p.  324. 
2  Ibid.  p.  323. 


204    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  hi 

belief.  But  these  victims  of  persecution  were 
few  compared  with  the  tens  of  thousands  of  other- 
wise sane  men  and  women  who,  not  knowing 
themselves  possessed,  were  really  under  the  mad 
compulsion  of  bringing  such  accusations,  of  hunt- 
ing out,  torturing,  and  burning  innocent  victims. 

"The  terror  of  mysterious  evil  agencies  fell  on 
the  spirits  of  men.  The  demon  of  fear  seemed 
to  have  obsessed  the  mind  of  European  humanity. 
Continental  Europe,  especially  France,  Germany, 
and  Switzerland,  suffered  greatly  from  the 
epidemic.  .  .  .  High  and  low  were  attacked  by  the 
malady  without  any  discrimination.  In  fact,  the 
more  learned  one  was  the  stronger  was  the  malady, 
the  more  acute  was  the  fear  of  inimical  mysterious 
agencies.  One  can  hardly  find  in  the  records  of 
human  crime  anything  more  disgusting,  more 
infamous,  than  this  insane  systematic  persecution 
of  feeble  women  and  tender  children.  .  .  .  The 
spirit  of  persecution  did  not  spare  even  the  little 
ones.  The  number  of  children  on  the  list  is 
great.  .  .  .  On  American  ground  we  find,  on  the 
accusation  of  a  few  hysterical  girls,  twenty 
innocent  persons  condemned  to  death."  * 

In  this  instance  we  must  perceive  that  the 
persecutors  had  all  the  symptoms  of  lack  of 
self-possession,  with  no  consciousness  of  being 
possessed. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  instances  and 
shocking  descriptions  of  such  "  possession."  We 
here  cite  but  one  more  —  a  description  of  excite- 
ment at  American  revivals  in  the  last  century :  — 

1  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  by  Boris  Sidis,  pp.  339,  341,  342. 


chap,  in       NEED    OF    'EXORCISM'  205 

"In  many  places  the  religious  epidemic  took 
the  form  of  laughing,  dancing,  and  barking  or 
dog  manias.  Whole  congregations  were  con- 
vulsed with  hysterical  laughter  during  holy  service. 
In  the  wild  delirium  of  religious  frenzy  people 
took  to  dancing,  and  at  last  to  barking  like  dogs. 
They  assumed  the  posture  of  dogs,  moving  about 
on  all  fours,  growling,  snapping  the  teeth,  and 
barking  with  such  an  exactness  of  imitation  as 
to  deceive  any  one  whose  eyes  were  not  directed 
to  the  spot.  Nor  were  the  people  who  suffered 
so  mortifying  a  transformation  always  of  the 
vulgar  classes :  persons  of  the  highest  rank  in 
society,  men  and  women  of  cultivated  minds  and 
polite  manners  found  themselves  by  sympathy 
reduced  to  this  degrading  situation."  x 

Lastly,  take  a  description  of  a  modern  financial 
crisis  by  an  economic  writer.  After  referring  to  the 
extravagant  projects  afterward  known  as  the  South 
Sea  Bubble  he  says:  "Every  great  crisis  reveals 
the  excessive  speculations  of  many  houses  which 
commonly  had  not  begun  or  had  not  carried  very 
far  those  speculations,  till  they  were  tempted  by 
the  daily  rise  of  prices  and  the  surrounding  fever. 
At  most  periods  of  great  commercial  excitement 
there  is  some  admixture  of  the  older  kind  of 
investing  mania.  .  .  .  The  mania  of  1825  and 
the  mania  of  1866  were  striking  examples  of  this. 
People  speculate  in  bubble  companies  and  in 
worthless  shares.  Almost  everything  will  be 
believed  for  a  little  while.  The  counters  in  the 
gambling  mania,  the  shares  in  the  companies 
1  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  by  Boris  Sidis,  p.  352. 


2o6    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

created  to  feed  the  mania,  are  discovered  to  be 
worthless  when  the  reaction  comes."  1 

But  indeed  we  do  not  need  to  go  so  far  afield, 
or  into  the  excitement  of  great  epidemics,  to  come 
across  afflictions  of  the  human  spirit  which  have 
many  symptoms  in  common  with  cases  of  "pos- 
session," although  not  that  one  symptom  desid- 
erated by  Professor  Harnack,  the  belief  in  being 
possessed.  We  all  know  the  "unhappy  member" 
of  the  family,  with  whom  self-consciousness  and 
emotional  excitement  form  a  disease,  to  whom  all 
passing  events  are  distorted  by  uncontrolled 
egotistical  emotions,  who,  alas,  from  birth  to 
the  hour  of  death  is  a  burden  and  a  perplexity  to 
relatives.  Have  we  not  here  the  same  perplexing 
phenomenon,  modified  by  all  that  education, 
medical  science,  and  even  religion,  can  do  ? 

Whether  the  causes  of  psychic  phenomena  are 
automatic  or  spiritualistic,  what  is  called  the 
"mediumistic  temperament"  is  a  fact,  and  prob- 
ably there  is  no  human  being  who  does  not  at 
some  time  experience  the  "mediumistic  condition" 
in  greater  or  less  degree.  The  condition  can  be 
encouraged  and  emphasised,  it  can  be  ignored  and 
minimised,  while  the  mind  is  still  in  control.  It 
has  its  uses  as  well  as  its  abuses;  but  whether  it 
opens  the  windows  of  the  human  mind  to  other 
tenants  or  not,  is,  so  far  as  science  goes,  matter 
only  for  presumption,  negative  or  affirmative. 
Alas,  the  borderland  between  self-control  and  the 
want  of  it,  is  wide,  and  by  our  present  science 
dimly  lit,  full  of  the  dread  possibilities  of  mental 

1  Lombard  Street,  by  Walter  Bagehot,  chap.  vi. 


chap,  in       NEED   OF   'EXORCISM'  207 

diseases.  The  healthy  and  the  superficial  laugh 
at  these  freaks;  the  wisest  and  most  deeply 
learned  fear  them,  while  at  the  same  time  they 
know  that  fear  itself  is  the  worst  and  most  deadly 
enemy  of  health.  The  wise  physician  to-day 
regards  every  habit,  however  trivial,  that  indicates 
the  failure  of  self-control,  as  a  symptom  which 
may  be  prolific  of  greater  evil  than  the  microbe 
of  any  organic  disease;  but  he  also  knows,  and 
acts  upon  the  knowledge,  that  the  less  the  subject 
of  this  symptom  fears  it,  the  more  he  ignores 
or  forgets  it,  the  more  likely  he  is  to  trample  it 
under  foot. 

There  are  several  types  of  "hysteria"  proper 
with  which  most  of  us  are  familiar.  (We  use 
the  foolish  word  "hysteria"  for  want  of  a  better.) 
The  first  we  may  picture  as  the  "demon"  of 
unrest.  It  is  seen  in  the  individual  who  has 
been  under  some  strain  of  work  or  emotion,  and 
has  succumbed  to  it  so  far  as  to  lose  the  power 
of  attention.  He  may  be  fidgety,  irritable,  and 
in  other  ways  annoying;  but  the  chief  symptom 
is  the  fact  that  he  cannot  spend  his  leisure  in  the 
repose  he  so  much  needs,  or  devote  to  his  work 
the  continued,  concentrated  attention  which  would 
produce  the  best  in  quantity  and  quality.  The 
next  type  is  perhaps  more  common  in  women; 
we  may  call  it  the  "demon"  of  emotional  vanity. 
It  is  seen  in  an  abnormal  craving  for  sympathy 
and  admiration,  or  for  novelty.  If  husband, 
children,  or  friends  remit  for  a  day  their  acts  of 
obvious  devotion,  some  misfortune  occurs  of 
which  the  hysteric  is  the  heroine,  and  in  which 


208    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

her  pathetic  or  heroic  behaviour  recalls  their 
attention.  If  she  meets  with  reproach,  or  even 
with  only  calm  civility,  she  suffers  all  the  agony 
of  spirit  that  cruelty  or  insult  might  evoke.  Men 
there  are  like  this,  but  such  women  are  unfortu- 
nately comparatively  common.  Again,  there  is 
a  type  in  which  we  may  see  the  "demon"  of 
instability,  apparent  in  the  man  or  woman  who 
lacks  either  decision  or  resolution.  Those  who 
lack  the  former  are  thrown  into  distress  by  being 
asked  to  decide  upon  a  reasonable  plan  of  action 
with  which  others  can  arrange  their  plans.  They 
change  and  change  about  with  regard  to  what 
they  will  do,  and  when  and  how  they  will  do  it, 
till  the  nervous  force  of  all  concerned  is  exhausted, 
and  only  emergency  pushes  them  to  action.  The 
other  variety  are  as  full  of  decisions  as  an  egg  is 
full  of  meat.  They  are  always  embarking  on  some 
course  of  action,  and  are  deeply  offended  when 
others  will  not  join  them;  but  they  are  not  able 
to  adhere  to  any  plan  for  more  than  a  short  time. 
The  worst  of  all,  perhaps,  is  the  "demon"  of 
jealousy,  too  well  known  to  need  description. 
All  these  types  can  be  seen  in  a  more  blatant  but 
more  elemental  form  in  the  youth  of  both  sexes : 
we  have  the  girl  who  is  always  ill  when  she 
does  not  want  to  do  something,  and  always 
well  when  she  does;  the  youth  who  is  always 
idle,  yet  always  indulging  large  intentions  of  am- 
bitious work,  and  many  other  varieties,  including 
those  classified  as  melancholia,  fanaticism,  etc., 
nervous  afflictions  which  are,  if  possible,  more 
afflicting   to   the   onlookers   than   to   the    patient, 


chap,  in      NEED    OF    ' EXORCISM'  209 

and  which  have  in  common  this,  that  they  all 
seem  to  be  not  diseases  but  faults,  and  faults  that 
would  be  corrected  if  the  patient  could  only  see 
himself  as  others  see  him.  The  more  carefully 
we  watch,  however,  the  more  we  realise  that, 
whether  or  not  there  was  an  hour  in  the  life  of 
each  when  the  fault  was  under  control  of  the  will, 
it  has  passed  beyond  that  control,  and  become 
uncontrollable  in  a  sense  in  which  faults  due  to 
reasoned  motives  are  not  uncontrollable.  For 
example,  a  man  may  lose  his  temper  a  thousand 
times  on  provocation,  but  if  he  constantly  becomes 
angry  without  provocation  he  has  passed  over 
the  border-line  of  normal  self-control.  Or  a 
woman  may  frequently  tell  lies  in  order  to  pro- 
duce the  desired  impression,  but  when  she 
cannot  describe  any  incident  without  displaying 
herself  as  being  admired,  or  suffering  neglect, 
there  is  something  other  than  a  moral  fault  to  be 
combated. 

Good  conditions  have  done  much,  have  made 
the  modern  hysteric  a  less  violent,  less  convulsive, 
less  noticeable  person  than  the  hysteric  of  less 
civilised  conditions.  Just  as  the  most  revolting 
bodily  diseases  have  given  place  to  milder  forms, 
so  the  hysteric  of  to-day  is  more  sedate,  apparently 
more  rational,  than  even  the  person  who  indulged 
in  the  fainting  fits  and  shrieking  fits  described  in 
the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century.  That 
century  in  its  turn  displays  a  more  moderate  form 
than  is  seen  in  the  convulsions  and  manias  of  the 
Dark  Ages.  But  are  these  poor  creatures  nowa- 
days   less    unhappy  ?     Do    they    create    less    un- 


210    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

happiness  ?  Have  we  come  any  nearer  than  did 
the  ancients  to  understanding  the  cause  of  mental 
compulsions,  or  as  near  to  their  cure  ? 

Whether  Jesus  believed  in  demoniacal  possession, 
or  used  it  as  a  parable  to  teach  a  more  profound 
truth,  is  not  essential.  The  lesson  is  plain.  It  is 
medical  science  —  all-  honour  to  it  —  that  is  now 
forcing  the  first  elements  of  this  lesson  upon  the 
attention  of  the  Church.  The  hysteric  is  not  able 
to  cure  himself.  To  oppose  his  actions  is  to 
increase  his  unreasonable  excitements;  to  yield  to 
his  every  whim  is  as  harmful.  His  malady  has  a 
moral  element  in  it,  but  he  is  rarely  to  blame  for 
contracting  it;  he  has  more  control  over  his  will 
than  he  exercises,  but  to  treat  him  as  a  wilful 
sinner  is  worse  than  useless.  All  such  disorders 
are  accompanied  by  some  abnormal  physical  change 
in  the  body  —  the  disorder  of  some  nerve  centre  or 
congestion  of  some  portion  of  the  brain  —  which 
from  the  physician's  point  of  view  is  their  cause. 
The  doctor  tries  his  medical  treatment  first. 
When  it  is,  as  it  most  often  is,  in  vain,  most 
doctors  will  admit  that  what  they  call  the  physical 
cause  can  only  be  cured,  if  at  all,  by  some 
powerful  and  external  stimulant  to  the  patient's 
mind.  Cures  by  such  means  are  rare,  but  are  well 
authenticated  and  not  in  any  way  miraculous. 
The  only  hope,  the  doctors  tell  us,  for  the 
majority  of  hysterical  patients  is  that  they  may 
come  in  contact  with  some  strong  mental  alterative 
—  a  commanding  personality,  an  overpowering 
emotion,  or  an  urgent  practical  necessity,  which 
may    compel    them    into    reasoned    and    definite 


chap,  in       NEED    OF    'EXORCISM'  211 

courses  of  action  and  in  so  doing  restore  to  them 
the  power  of  self-direction.  But  alas,  these  same 
doctors  agree  that  for  one  case  that  is  cured, 
hundreds  and  thousands  remain  uncured,  a  source 
of  mischief  in  every  society  and  of  constant  pain 
in    almost   every    domestic   circle. 

It  is  not  —  as  some  modern  writers  would  assure 

us  —  the  belief  that  these  most  miserable  maladies 

are  wrought  by  unseen  powers  of  evil  that  makes 

life  gloomy,  but  the  fact  that  such  maladies  exist, 

and   that  they   are   common,   and   that   medecine 

knows  no  cure  for  them.     By  endorsing  the  popular 

belief  in  demoniacal  possession,  or  by  using  it  as 

a  parable,  Jesus  taught — with  the  modern  doctor — 

that  there  was  no  use  in  wasting  words  with  the 

patient  or  in  expecting  faith  and  obedience  from 

the  "possessed."     He    called    to  their    relief   the 

family  and  the  Church.     He  demanded  faith  first 

from  the  interceding  friend.     "O  woman,  great  is 

thy  faith;  the  demon  is  gone  out  of  thy  daughter." 

And  the  same  with  the  father  of  the  epileptic  boy. 

He  demanded  most  faith  from  the  representatives 

of  his   kingdom  —  the  would-be   exorcists   of  his 

infant  Church.     From  them  he  demanded  great 

faith  and  prayer.     He  said,  by  his  own  ministry 

as  an  exorcist,  "Here  is  a  terrible  evil,  which  is 

directly  opposed  to  God's  will  and  man's  welfare; 

and  it  must  be  faced  and  abolished  by  men  who 

will  lend  themselves  as  instruments  to  God's  will." 

No    magic    was    required;     God's    intention    was 

certain,  his  power  indubitable,  the  result  of  fearless 

faith   invariable.     Before   any  man  —  one  of  the 

Twelve,  one  of  the  Seventy,  one  of  the  sons  of  the 


212    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

Pharisees  —  before  any  man  who  lent  himself  to  be 
the  finger  of  God  for  the  purpose,  this  evil  would 
vanish. 

One  great  part  of  the  joy  of  Jesus'  gospel  is  this, 
that  he  offers  for  the  loss  of  self-control  prompt 
restoration,  the  reception  of  which  does  not  require 
any  curious  knowledge  as  to  the  cause  of  the  ill. 
When  man  cannot  manage  himself,  has  indeed  no 
power  to  begin  to  free  himself,  Jesus  by  his  whole 
ministry  proclaimed  that  it  was  the  will  of  God  to 
set  him  free,  not  by  any  slow  process  of  self-help 
combined  with  the  help  of  the  divine  spirit,  —  that 
may  be  the  way  of  salvation  for  those  who  have 
the  normal  power  of  choice,  —  but  at  once  and 
unconditionally.  When  a  man  was  not  his  own 
master,  Jesus,  as  representing  God,  set  him  free  to 
exercise  that  power  of  choice  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  being  the  only  means  of  his  salvation,  is 
worth  all  else  to  God.  So  large  a  part  of  the  life 
of  Jesus  consists  in  these  acts  of  restoring  volitional 
power  that  to  neglect  his  teaching  concerning  them 
is  an  atrophy  of  faith. 

Salvation  means  the  direction  of  the  whole 
concrete  life  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  love  to 
God  and  man.  Unfettered  power  of  self-direction 
by  no  means  ensures  this  result,  else  would  the 
works  of  mental  healing  have  been  all  that  the 
spirit  of  man  required  from  the  Saviour  of  the 
world.  But  salvation  can  come  only  to  a  man 
with  a  normal  power  of  self-direction.  Hence 
this  power  was  the  primary  gift  of  Jesus,  as  it  is 
the  primary  necessity  of  every  individual.  When- 
ever men  had  will-power  Jesus  did  not  coerce  it, 


chap,  in       NEED    OF    'EXORCISM'  213 

even  to  prevent  its  worst  abuse,  but  when  they 
had  lost  it  he  gave  it  back  to  them. 

The  joy  and  hope  of  the  Christian  revelation 
concerning  the  slavery  of  the  will  has  long  been 
so  diminished  as  to  be  scarce  recognisable;  and 
when  here  and  there  throughout  the  Christian  ages 
bursts  of  popular  enthusiasm  have  occurred,  in 
which  men  have  cast  their  chains  behind  them  and 
believed  practically  in  the  God  who  in  the  realm 
of  individual  personality  is  always  ready  to  make 
all  things  new,  they  have,  by  the  greater  part  of 
the  Church,  been  regarded  with  suspicion  which 
soon  turned  to  disapproval.  We  cannot  tell  what 
would  have  happened  to  the  world  if  at  any 
time  the  mass  of  the  Church  had  upheld  by  faith 
and  prayer  those  who  were  bold  enough  to  touch 
the  garment  of  the  risen  Christ  and  be  made 
whole  every  whit.  We  have  no  means  of  con- 
ceiving what  a  new  earth  would  be  like,  for  we 
have  never  experienced  the  power  of  a  corporate 
faith  in  this  revelation  of  Jesus;  but  to  the  logical 
and  non-Christian  man  there  lies  no  choice  between 
believing  simply  and  naturally  in  the  powers 
and  privileges  of  Christian  faith  as  taught  and 
exhibited  in  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus,  and  the  belief 
that  the  Gospels  represent  only  a  great  ethical 
teacher  hampered  by  temporary  and  local  su- 
perstition. 

To-day  we  are  met  on  all  sides  by  a  ghastly 
evil,  partly  moral,  partly  physical,  to  which  science 
has  attached  no  certain  cause,  no  probable  cure. 
The  dictum  of  Tertullian,  "If  a  man  calls  him- 
self a  Christian  and  cannot  expel  a  demon,  let  him 


214    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

be  put  to  death  on  the  spot,"  sounds  perhaps  a 
trifle  barbarous,  but  to  the  plain  common  sense 
of  an  onlooker  seems,  on  the  whole,  more  in- 
telligent than  the  attitude  of  the  whole  modern 
Church,  claiming  to  worship  Jesus  and  standing 
paralysed  before  the  nameless  misery  caused  by 
the  half-nervous,  half-moral,  disabilities  which  sap 
the  will-power  of  thousands  of  her  children. 


CHAPTER   IV 

MIND   AND    DISEASE 

In  spite  of  the  enormous  progress  of  medical 
science  in  knowledge  and  skill,  there  is,  in  the 
practical  application  of  both  to  the  bodies  of  men 
or  animals,  little  exact  knowledge.  Even  the 
veterinary  surgeon  finds  that  the  personal  or  in- 
dividual element  in  horse  or  dog  baffles  his  forecast 
of  cause  and  effect;  what  ought  to  cure,  occasionally 
kills ;  what  ought  to  kill,  may  cure.  And  although 
we  may  call  these  variations  rare,  yet  when  we 
contrast  their  recurrence  with  the  certain  results 
we  can  obtain  when  we  work  upon  inanimate 
things,  we  are  forced  to  perceive  that  there  is  in 
animal  vitality  a  factor,  or  perhaps  many  factors, 
of  which  we  have  no  knowledge. 

The  spread  of  any  disease  for  no  apparent 
reason  than  that  it  has  taken  hold  on  the  popular 
fancy  ought  to  be  a  subject  of  much  more  serious 
attention  than  it  is.  Physiology,  bacteriology,  have 
nothing  to  say  here,  nothing  more,  at  least,  than 
can  be  expressed  by  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders. 
The  psychologist  speaks  of  the  force  of  a  corporate 
idea  in  the  neurotic  origin  of  disease.     Every  one 

215 


216    GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

concerned  who  has  the  power  of  reflection  perceives 
that  we  are  here  dealing  with  an  unknown  some- 
thing which  leaps  from  one  man's  nervous  system 
to  another,  quite  as  baleful  in  effect,  and  quite 
as  terrible,  as  any  specific  bacteria.  To  call  it 
"suggestion,"  to  say  that  it  works  by  unconscious 
mind,  explains  little,  and  gives  no  remedy.  If  we 
had  not  the  safeguarding  hopes  aroused  by  quack 
medicines,  "Christian  Science,"  and  the  like, 
suggestion  would  soon  prey  upon  the  minds  of 
many  in  every  community,  a  worse  monster  of 
the  invisible  air  than  even  bacteria  or  the  demons 
of  old. 

Not  long  ago  the  world  of  medical  science  was 
moving  on  under  the  impression  that  the  progress 
of  knowledge  was  tending  all  in  one  direction  —  to 
show  that  health  or  ill-health  in  any  part  of  the 
body  must  produce  corresponding  results  on  the 
brain  and  therefore  on  the  mind.  Mind  as  an 
origin  of  bodily  affections  was  disregarded.  More 
recently  it  has  been  admitted  that,  bodily  harms 
being  of  two  sorts,  functional  and  organic,  the 
former  may  be  caused,  and  in  some  cases  cured, 
by  mental  agency.  Now  we  have  a  few  doctors 
coming  forward  to  claim  a  much  larger  power  for 
the  mental  agent.  Dr.  A.  T.  Schofield's  books 
make  the  drift  of  this  school  plain  to  the  lay  mind. 
One  quotation  will  show  that  in  these  matters  no 
finality   is   reached. 

"We  have  seen  that  the  powers  of  the  un- 
conscious mind  over  the  body  are  well-nigh 
immeasurable;  and  knowing,  as  we  now  do,  that 
our    old    division    into    functional    and    organic 


chap,  iv         MIND   AND    DISEASE  217 

diseases  is  merely  the  expression  of  our  ignorance, 
and  that  all  diseases,  even  hysterical,  involve  or- 
ganic disturbance  somewhere,  we  are  prepared  to 
believe  that  faith  and  other  unorthodox  cures, 
putting  into  operation  such  a  powerful  agent  as 
the  unconscious  mind,  or,  if  you  prefer  the  formula, 
'  the  forces  of  nature/  are  not  necessarily  limited  to 
so-called  functional  diseases  at  all"  1 

Let  us  quote  Dr.  Paul  Dubois,  of  the  University 
of  Berne,  who  appears  to  be  a  staunch  materialist 
and  determinist,  and  writes  about  educating  his 
patients  into  a  health-giving  frame  of  mind,  as  one 
might  speak  of  training  the  tendrils  of  a  vine  or 
the  habits  of  a  dog. 

"I  have  been  able,  in  the  course  of  a  rather 
long  medical  career,  to  give  up  all  physical  and 
drug  measures.  Undoubtedly  this  purely  psycho- 
therapeutic treatment  is  not  easy.  It  takes  an 
immense  amount  of  time  and  patience,  on  the 
part  of  the  patient  especially,  and  as  well  on  the 
part  of  the  physician.  The  practitioner  some- 
times grows  weary  of  this  work,  and  might  be 
tempted  to  take  up  the  easier  role  of  prescribing 
drugs.  But  when  one  has  reflected  on  these 
subjects,  when  one  has  seen  the  patients  recover 
their  robust  health  after  years  of  suffering,  and 
regain  their  power  to  work,  and  become  brave; 
when  one  has  seen  them  acting  on  their  environ- 
ment, and  transmitting  their  optimism  to  it  by  the 
force  of  contagion,  then  one  takes  courage  and 
goes  on  with  one's  task,  which  is  always  to  bring 
back  patients  to  a  healthy  life  from  a  triple  point 

1  The  Forces  of  Mind,  pp.  1 64-5. 


218    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

of  view  —  the  psychic,  the  intellectual,  and  the 
moral."1 

But  these  doctors  stand  somewhat  apart.  The 
point  where  the  main  body  of  advanced  medical 
men  seem  to  part  company  with  the  historic  Gospel 
is  in  the  distinction  they  make  between  the  diseases, 
mostly  functional,  which  they  admit  it  is  possible  to 
cure  by  mental  suggestion,  and  those  which  cause 
organic  disturbance  in  the  body,  and  which  are 
therefore  reckoned  as  quite  beyond  the  reach  of 
mental  influence.  It  is  better  here  frankly  to 
recognise  that  there  is  a  very  great  and  pardonable 
anxiety  abroad,  lest  any  person  of  weight  should 
make  any  public  utterance  which  might  lead  those 
suffering  from  a  morbid  growth  to  defer  the  surgical 
operation,  which,  if  promptly  performed,  would 
prolong  or  save  life.  It  is  this  anxiety  which 
has  caused,  and  which  partly  excuses,  some  truly 
curious  statements  made  by  religious  leaders  upon 
the  limited  efficacy  of  prayer  for  the  sick.  But 
the  religious  mind  ought  to  admit  that  while  it 
may  be  foolish  for  any  man  to  disobey  his  doctor 
before  he  experiences  the  perfect  cure  of  faith, 
and  while  in  the  present  low  state  of  the  corporate 
Christian  faith  it  may  often  be  impossible  to 
obtain  such  cure,  it  ought,  nevertheless,  to  be 
possible  to  discuss  calmly  the  serious  question 
whether  diseases  ought  to  be  classed  as  curable 
or  not  curable  by  faith. 

There  is  a  certain  presumption  against  the 
validity  of  this  distinction  between  diseases,  in  the 
mere  fact  that  it  has  the  aspect  of  embodying  a 

1  Les  Psychoneuroses,  p.  345  of  American  translation. 


chap,  iv         MIND    AND    DISEASE  219 

temporary  truce  between  the  medical  materialism 
rife  everywhere  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  and  the 
extreme  idealism  of  those  who  opposed  it.  The 
place  where  two  opposing  schools  halt  for  a  time 
and  try  to  come  to  terms,  may  be  mistaken  for  the 
golden  mean  of  truth,  but  it  is  seldom  the  same. 
In  almost  every  controversy  the  side  which 
possesses,  on  the  whole,  least  truth,  is  always 
making  a  stand  behind  some  temporary  earthwork, 
admitting  certain  concessions,  and  saying,  "Thus 
far  and  no  further";  then  after  a  while  retreating 
again.  Most  of  us  remember  that  in  the  long 
resistance  made  by  certain  religious  dogmatists  to 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  many  such  half-way 
stands  were  made  which  did  not  at  all  represent 
the  mean  of  truth  between  two  opposites.  That 
medical  materialism  has  already  abandoned  one 
class  of  ailments  after  another  as  admitting  the 
mid  cure,  is  no  proof  that  it  will  be  forced  to  a 
further  retreat,  but  it  affords  a  certain  reasonable 
expectation  that  it  may  be  so. 

Again,  the  absolute  unity  of  mind  and  body  in 
which  life,  as  far  as  we  know  consists,  makes  us 
suspect  the  finality  of  the  idea  that,  while  functional 
disorders  may  under  the  right  conditions  be  cured 
by  a  mental  process,  certain  organic  diseases  can  be 
cured  only  by  the  surgeon's  knife.  Suppose  some 
malign  germ  to  be  at  its  evil  work.  If  the  blood 
be  very  healthy,  if  it  circulate  freely  in  the  part 
affected,  it  may  overcome  the  poisonous  intruders. 
But  the  composition  of  the  blood  by  digestive 
processes,  its  oxidisation,  and  its  circulation,  are 
matters  in  which  it  is  admitted  that  the  mind  or 


M 


220    GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

unconscious  mind,  under  right  conditions,  has  large 
control.  Consider  the  difference  between  a  limb 
of  the  body  as  long  as  it  remains  part  of  the  body 
and  the  same  limb  amputated.  As  long  as  any 
part  of  the  body,  however  diseased,  is  alive  it  is 
animated  by  the  life-mind,  to  whose  power  we 
are  not  in  a  position  to  put  a  final  limit.  Not 
long  ago  The  Lancet,  in  a  leading  article,  warned 
sufferers  from  cancer  against  wasting  time  in 
experimenting  with  new  treatments  —  violet  leaves 
and  the  like  —  till  it  was  too  late  for  the  surgeon 
to  operate  with  hope  of  success.  The  moral  was 
pointed  with  the  admission  that,  in  certain  cases  of 
indisputable  cancer,  cures  had  come  about  "for 
some  unknown  reason''  without  treatment,  and  it 
was  such  unaccountable  cases  that  lent  a  false 
value  to  certain  drugs  that  might  have  been 
administered.1  Here,  in  the  very  fortress  of 
surgical  assurance,  is  an  admission  that  must  cause 
every  one  who  reflects  to  perceive  that  if  an  organic 
disease  ever  pass  away  without  treatment,  there 
cannot  be  anything  illogical  and  extravagant  in  the 
presumption  that  such  diseases,  as  well  as  func- 
tional ones,  may  be  under  the  control  of  the  mind. 
There  is  another  argument  against  this  distinc- 
tion, arising  out  of  the  evidence  that  cures  of 
organic  diseases  by  faith  actually  take  place.  We 
are  told,  and  rightly,  by  medical  men,  that  there 
is  no  scientific  proof  of  organic  diseases  being 
cured  by  faith.  No  cures  of  faith,  whatever  the 
disease,  can  admit  of  scientific  test.  Even  if  no 
doubt  can  attach  to  the  diagnosis  before  or  after 

1  The  Lancet,  April  28,  1906. 


chap,  iv         MIND   AND   DISEASE  221 

the  cure,  it  still  always  remains  for  the  sceptic  to 
give   as  the  cause  of  the  rare  event  some  other 
condition  that  was  coincident  with  the  mental  or 
religious    effort    at    cure,    it    being   impossible    to 
eliminate  all  other  conditions.     But  while  there  is 
no  proof  forthcoming  to  convince  a  mind  which 
assumes  that  such  cures  are  impossible,  there  is 
much  evidence  for  the  candid  and  intelligent  in 
the  personal  character  and  impressions  of  people 
composing    such    societies    as,    for    example,    the 
Christian  Alliance  for  faith-healing  in  New  York. 
Its    doctrines    are    "orthodox,"    of   the    extreme 
Evangelical   cast;     the   writings   it   puts    forward 
evince  that  wilful  ignorance  of  many  things  {e.g., 
Biblical  criticism)  which  is  usual  with  extremists 
of  this  class;    but  this  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
its  leaders  and  workers  are  sane,  practical  people. 
Their  only  means  of  cure  is  the  prayer  of  faith; 
their  only  peculiar  tenet,  that  with  God  all  things 
are  possible.     They  are  certainly  under  the  im- 
pression that  diseases  of  every  class  are  cured; 
and  these  impressions,  taken  in  connection  with 
their   personal   character,    have   evidential   value. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  other  such  societies. 
They  do  not  seem  to  seek  notoriety  for  their  works 
of  healing,  presumably  obeying  the  gospel  injunc- 
tions in  this  regard;    but  the  present  writer  has 
reason  to  believe  that  their  work  will  yield  to  pains- 
taking investigation  such  evidence  as  is  possible  in 
psychical  matters  for  the  truth  of  their  belief. 

From  the  Christian  point  of  view  this  matter 
is  serious.  The  earliest  traditions  embodied  in 
the  Gospels  present  Jesus  as  curing  all  who  came 


222  GOD'S    CITADEL    ON    EARTH    book  m 

to  him,  and  commissioning  his  servants  to  do  the 
like.  Here  there  is  no  distinction  between  diseases 
that  can  and  cannot  be  cured  by  God  on  the 
condition  of  assured  faith  in  the  applicant.  If 
this  is  not  part  of  the  history  of  Jesus  then  we 
have  no  authentic  history.  There  is  much  more 
difficulty  in  supposing  these  cures  to  be  miraculous 
(in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  word)  than  in  sup- 
posing them  to  be  effected  by  a  most  benevolent 
energy  of  personal  influence  which  persuaded 
faith  and  thus  brought  the  will  and  thought  and 
emotion  of  the  sufferer  into  that  degree  of 
assurance  which  wrought  health.  Further,  it 
would  appear  most  incredible  that  Jesus  should 
have  given  such  a  large  part  of  his  brief  ministry 
to  the  curing  of  disease  if  he  did  not  mean  health, 
and  the  attainment  of  health  by  faith,  to  be  an 
abiding  condition  of  the  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth. 

To  sum  up.  It  is  more  difficult  to  believe 
that  while  many  diseases  may  be  cured  by  the 
right  mental  conditions,  there  are  others  over 
which  such  mental  conditions  have  no  influence, 
than  to  believe  that  all  diseases  come  under  the 
same  natural  laws,  however  powerless  we  may  yet 
be  to  apply  these  laws. 

Setting  aside  the  distinction  sought  to  be  drawn 
between  functional  and  organic  diseases  as  respec- 
tively curable  and  non-curable,  we  return  to  the 
fact  that  no  one  who  has  been  watching  the  trend 
of  medical  thought  can  doubt  that  the  importance 
of  mental  therapeutics  is  more  and  more  clearly 
recognised  by  the  vast  majority  of  the  profession. 


chap,  iv         MIND    AND    DISEASE  223 

It  is  almost  universally  acknowledged  that  where 
the  patient  has  healthy  will-power  it  must  be 
called  into  exercise  to  choose  healthy  thoughts 
and  exclude  unhealthy  suggestion;  and  where  the 
will-power  is  feeble  the  most  cheerful  and  healthy 
environment  frequently  fails  entirely  to  prevent 
the  patient  dwelling  upon  the  pains  he  has  and 
fearing  worse.  We  quote  Dr.  Schofield  in  a 
passage  in  which  many  of  his  fellow-doctors  will 
heartily  agree  with  him.  It  is  upon  the  power  of 
auto-suggestion. 

"What  the  patient  has  to  do  is  carefully  and 
systematically  to  saturate  his  brain  by  suggestion 
with  what  he  wishes  to  be  or  to  become.  This 
can  be  done  by  speech,  by  thought,  by  sight,  and 
by  hearing.  Here  are  four  brain-paths,  all  of 
which  tend  to  set  the  unconscious  mind  —  the  vis 
—  to  work  at  the  process  of  cure."  1 

It  is  worth  while  to  pause  and  reflect  upon 
these  powers  about  which  we  are  all  learning 
to  talk  so  glibly  —  the  unconscious  mind  or  life- 
mind  which  manages  us  and  ours,  and  our 
occasional  power  and  frequent  powerlessness  to 
direct  it.  Experience  proves  that  by  direct  voli- 
tion the  conscious  will  can  do  something,  but  not 
much,  to  arrest  or  assist  the  involuntary  processes 
of  brain  and  body;  but  that  by  directing  the 
attention  to  this  or  that,  the  conscious  will  can 
do  very  much  to  control  the  unconscious  mind 
for  good  or  evil.  We  must,  then,  attribute  to 
the  conscience  an  increased  responsibility,  not 
only  for  the  actions  it  can  directly  control,  but 

1  Nerves  in  Disorder,  by  Dr.  Schofield,  p.  123. 


224  GOD'S    CITADEL   ON   EARTH    book  m 

for  the  whole  well-being  and  atmosphere  in  which 
it  places  that  far  subtler  and  stronger  power, 
the  life-mind.  Devotional  books  have  made  us 
familiar  with  this  idea,  but  only  as  applied  to  the 
abstraction  of  the  soul.  We  frequently  say  it  is 
not  what  a  man  does  but  what  he  is,  that  is  the 
source  of  his  power  and  influence;  and  what  he 
is,  we  are  now  taught,  is  the  result  of  the  way  in 
which  he  directs  his  attention  to  external  sources 
of  suggestion.  It  thus  becomes  evident,  not  only 
that  the  voluntary  observance  of  religious  acts 
has  a  more  far-reaching  power  over  him  who 
performs  them  than  he  can  be  consciously  aware 
of,  but  that  the  beliefs  and  sentiments  of  which 
he  is  aware  may  not  express  the  set  of  his  being 
at  any  time;  they  can  only  express  what  he  desires 
it  to  be.  The  same  is  true  of  the  outward 
observance  of  any  sentiment  or  principle,  such  as 
happy  acts,  kindly  acts,  loyal  acts,  and  acts  of 
faith  in  man  or  in  God.  His  life-mind,1  accord- 
ing to  the  doctrine  we  have  just  quoted,  will 
eventually  become  saturated  with  the  sentiments 
he  acts  up  to,  even  i£  at  first  he  experiences  almost 
nothing  of  the  sentiment,  and  the  unconscious 
life  thus  acted  upon  will  become  a  force  much 
greater  than  the  conscious  will,  and  will  accomplish 
what  that  could  not  accomplish.  In  faith,  in 
belief,  in  intention,  what  we  suppose  ourselves  to 
be  may  not  coincide  with  what  we  are.  We  may 
think  we  tacitly  hold  a  faith  which  the  whole  set 
of  our  unconscious  life-mind  disregards,  and  it 
will  disregard  it  until  we  put  it  into  determined 
1  We  use  this  term  in  preference  to  "unconscious  mind." 


chap,  iv         MIND   AND    DISEASE  225 

action.  On  this  theory  we  can  realise,  even  in 
our  present  crippled  and  feeble  condition  of  voli- 
tion and  body,  that  self-control  would  mean  health, 
happiness,  and  goodness  of  an  order  which  we  can 
scarcely  conceive,  as  we  seldom  meet  the  three 
together  in  any  perfection.  We  may  and  must 
go  on  from  this  idea  to  the  psychological  result 
that  would  accrue  from  the  mere  multiplication 
of  men  of  this  sort,  what  the  strength  of  their 
unconscious  corporate  life  would  be,  for  that  also 
would  become  healthy,  happy,  and  good,  would 
carry  them,  and  those  who  approached  them,  on 
in  these  paths  with  cumulative  force. 

It  is  curious  to  note  that  many  faith-healers 
imagine  that  they  cannot  recognise  the  direct 
"finger  of  God"  as  the  instrument  of  health  un- 
less they  regard  the  cure  as  miraculous.  If  bodily 
health,  individual  and  corporate,  should  accrue 
from  the  courage  and  joy  of  believing  Jesus  to  be 
to  the  Church  now  what  he  was  when  on  earth, 
such  health  would  be  as  natural  as  the  yearly 
harvest  —  for  which  we  pray,  for  which  we  give 
thanks  —  as  directly  the  work  of  the  "finger  of 
God"  as  the  conversion  of  a  sinner  or  the  death 
of  an  aged  saint. 


CHAPTER  V 

FAITH   AND   THE    DOCTORS 

There  is  a  large  notion  abroad  that  science  and 
faith-healing  are  opposed;  but,  in  fact,  the  issue 
between  the  "mind-healer"  and  the  medical 
profession  has  no  more  bearing  upon  the  salvation 
of  the  body  offered  by  Christ  than  the  quarrel 
between  the  Church  and  Galileo  had  upon  the 
revolutions  of  the  solar  system.  The  doctrine 
that  medicine  and  surgery  are  injurious  is  not 
any  part  of  the  gospel.  Hygiene  and  medicine 
must  bear  to  the  salvation  of  the  body  the  same 
relation  that  all  education  in  right  living,  and  the 
machinery  of  law  and  justice,  bear  to  the  salvation 
of  the  soul. 

Thus,  every  Christian  believes  that  sudden 
moral  reformation  of  character  is,  by  God's  grace, 
possible  and  desirable;  but  he  believes  also  that 
every  help  to  virtue  is  at  the  same  time  neces- 
sary to  the  community.  There  is  no  antagonism 
between  the  two  methods;  nay  more,  they  are 
recognised  as  complementary,  God  working  in  and 
through  every  agency  for  moral  health  as  truly 
as  in  his  more  rapid  work  on  more  receptive  souls. 

226 


chap,  v    FAITH    AND    THE    DOCTORS    227 

If  the  most  spiritually  minded  priests  or  mission 
preachers  of  our  own  day  were  to  undertake  the 
uplifting  of  some  degraded  district,  they  would 
believe  and  teach  that  God  could  and  would  make 
a  sudden  reformation  possible  to  the  most  degraded 
man  if  he  had  the  spiritual  insight  requisite  to 
conversion.  But,  no  doubt,  at  the  same  time  a 
great  part  of  their  activity  would  be  directed  to 
the  establishment  of  institutions  for  the  prevention 
and  more  gradual  cure  of  moral  failure.  The 
spiritual  director,  the  schoolmaster,  the  gymnast, 
the  librarian,  the  policeman,  the  judge,  the  master 
of  the  reformatory,  the  jailer,  would  have  their 
place  in  the  scheme  of  reformation.  They  would 
be  necessary,  because  the  kingdom  of  God  does 
not  come  suddenly  to  a  whole  community.  It 
spreads  like  leaven,  grows  like  a  plant.  It  requires 
human  instruments  for  its  establishment  and 
culture.  These  agents,  as  far  as  they  educate  and 
help  forward  what  is  good,  would  be  helpful  even 
in  the  lives  of  those  men  most  suddenly  and  most 
soundly  converted;  and  in  so  far  as  they  are 
required  to  cure  or  suppress  moral  disorder,  they 
would  be  necessary  because  conversion  depends 
upon  a  degree  of  spiritual  insight  which  every 
man  does  not,  perhaps  cannot,  exercise. 

From  the  Gospels  we  gather  that  bodily  welfare 
likewise  comes  in  both  these  ways.  Whether  we 
can  fit  it  into  our  theories  or  not,  the  fact  remains 
that  human  nature  does  not,  except  in  a  few 
instances,  avail  itself  of  the  best  opportunities  that 
offer.  People  often  prefer  practically  to  refuse 
both    God's    direct   and   indirect   ways   of  giving 


228    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

health.  Man  is  like  a  household  dog  that  for  the 
most  part  prefers  the  neighbour's  garbage  tub  to 
the  most  delicate  morsels  in  the  supplies  of  his 
master's  loving  providence.  We  are  told  that 
when  Jesus  lived  on  earth  he  healed  all  who  came 
or  were  brought  to  him ;  but  no  one  has  ever 
dreamed  that  all  the  sick  in  Palestine  came  to  him. 
We  need  to  pause  long  in  thought  over  that 
simple  statement  of  St.  Mark  that  he  could  do  no 
mighty  work  in  his  own  district;  and  the  limita- 
tion was  not  in  him  !  If  we  take  his  works  of 
healing,  of  which  the  details  are  given  us,  we 
find  every  degree  between  the  word  spoken  at  a 
distance  from  the  patient  to  some  intercessor  full 
of  faith,  and  a  somewhat  elaborate  process  of 
visible  means.  For  this  one  the  Master's  presence 
is  enough,  for  another  his  touch,  for  another 
merely  the  touch  of  his  garment.  From  some  the 
burden  of  sins  must  first  be  removed  by  forgive- 
ness, while  others  require  the  caution,  "Sin  no 
more  lest  a  worse  thing  come  upon  thee."  Is  it 
not  evident  that  even  here,  where  so  many  received 
health  suddenly,  there  could  have  been  no  sudden 
raising  of  the  standard  of  national  health  ? 

Further,  there  is  no  clash  between  the  Master's 
method  and  such  methods  of  healing  as  were  then 
in  vogue.  Jesus  did  not  denounce  other  physicians ; 
on  the  contrary,  he  said  that  whatever  good  was 
done  was  by  God's  power.  The  physician  then 
and  now  had  no  reason  to  find  fault.  Can  we 
suppose  that  the  "many  physicians"  who  had 
tried  and  failed  to  heal  a  poor  woman,  could  have 
been  so  wicked  as  to  refuse  to  be  glad  when  she 


chap,  v    FAITH   AND   THE   DOCTORS    229 

obtained  health  by  approaching  the  Christ  ?  Nay, 
if  at  the  beginning  she  could  have  got  it  in  that 
way,  would  they  have  been  so  ruthless  as  to  desire 
that  she  should  suffer  many  things  at  their  hands, 
and  waste  her  substance,  before  she  appealed  to 
him  ?  Certainly  our  brothers  of  the  medical  pro- 
fession to-day  are  incapable  of  such  cruelty.  They 
do  not,  most  of  them,  believe  that  the  sick  can 
obtain  health  by  spiritual  contact  with  Jesus  Christ, 
but  they  can  have  no  objection  to  the  experiment, 
and  its  success  must  rejoice  every  physician  worthy 
of  the  name.  They  may  fear  precious  time  being 
lost  in  a  futile  experiment;  but  we  have  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  operation  of  faith  and  the 
healing  grace  of  God  requires  time  on  the  divine 
side;  and  for  every  man  its  reception  must  be  by 
the  grace  of  faith,  which  ought  not  to  cover  long 
periods  of  indecision.  The  cases  are  very  few 
where  medical  aid  and  the  exercise  of  faith  need 
be  even  for  a  day  in  opposition.  If  they  are,  it 
is  faith  that  is  at  fault,  not  science. 

Every  physician,  however  uncertain  he  may  be 
in  all  matters  of  faith,  is  quite  certain  that  he  can 
only  accomplish  anything  by  co-operation  with 
what  he  calls  "nature"  or  "vitality."  All  that  he 
can  do  is  to  evoke,  encourage,  and  strengthen  this 
vital  force.  This  has  been  a  commonplace  of  all 
schools  of  medicine  since  they  existed.  More 
recent,  but  now  as  clearly  acknowledged,  is  the 
power  of  certain  conscious  mental  tendencies  to 
help  in  raising  the  vitality  or  lowering  it,  —  a 
cheerful,  hopeful,  and  serene  frame  of  mind;  an 
enthusiastic  desire  for  health;    a  firm  purpose  to 


230    GOD'S  CITADEL   ON  EARTH 

regain  it,  —  all  these  are  now  freely  admitted  to  be 
the  physician's  best  friends,  and  in  many  cases  his 
necessary  allies.  If  religion,  by  a  renewal  of  faith 
in  God,  should  bring  strong  reinforcements  to  the 
innate  vitality  of  the  body,  strong  enough  to  keep 
the  body  well,  or  to  restore  it  without  medical  aid 
when  it  is  diseased,  or  to  co-operate  swiftly  and 
surely  with  recognised  means,  this  would  be  a 
result  that  every  physician  would  hail  with  delight, 
whether  or  not  he  agreed  with  the  religious  view 
of  the  how  and  why  of  the  increased  vitality.  It 
is  a  conservative  religious  sentiment  which  has 
made  objection  to  the  exercise  of  faith  in  regard 
to  health,  never  the  true  scientific  spirit.  What 
every  medical  man  desires  for  his  patient  is  life, 
more  abundant  life;  and  he  knows  far  better  than 
a  layman  the  limits  of  his  power  —  the  diseases 
which  he  cannot  cure,  the  disabilities  which  he 
cannot  remove. 

Faith-healers  must  be  wrong  in  pronouncing 
any  means  that  produce  health  of  body  or  mind 
to  be  evil.  The  principle  is  clearly  laid  down  by 
Jesus  that  evil  can  never  produce  good;  that 
wherever  an  evil  thing  is  cast  down,  the  human 
agent,  whatever  his  doctrine,  is  the  instrument  of 
the  finger  of  God.  There  is  really  no  ambiguity 
in  the  well-known  passage  in  which  our  Lord 
rebuts  the  charge  of  Satanic  power,  not  by  the 
slightest  counter-charge,  but  by  laying  down  the 
principle  for  all  time  that  good  is  of  God,  and 
of  God  only.  Then,  too,  even  an  imperfect 
acquaintance  with  the  history  of  religious  thought 
in  its  connection  with  the  application  of  a  dawning 


chap,  v    FAITH    AND    THE    DOCTORS     231 

knowledge  of  nature  to  man's  welfare  ought  to 
make  it  clear  that  no  line  can  be  drawn  between 
the  application  of  scientific  truth  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  health  (hygiene),  and  its  application  to  the 
restoration  of  health  (medicine  and  surgery). 
There  is  no  boundary-line,  the  two  merge;  if 
one  is  of  God  so  is  the  other.  As  a  good  example 
of  the  alliance  of  science  and  faith  in  the  promo- 
tion of  health,  we  may  remember  that  Christian 
saints  at  one  time  believed  in  the  sanctity  of  dirt, 
that  when  one  gleam  of  scientific  light  swept  away 
from  Christendom  the  idea  that  cleanliness  was 
a  sinful  luxury,  and  when  dirt  also  came  to  be 
regarded  as  a  sign  rather  of  impurity  than  of 
purity  of  soul,  and  the  proverb  "Cleanliness  is 
next  to  godliness "  became  a  possibility,  with  dirt 
disappeared  from  Christian  civilisation  the  more 
hideous  forms  of  disease.  The  movement  was 
scientific;  the  Church  assimilated  it  to  her  great 
gain. 

We  conclude  that  there  can  be  no  real  opposi- 
tion between  medical  science  and  a  salutary  power 
over  the  body  gained  by  faith  in  divine  healing. 


CHAPTER  VI1 

THE    WILL    OF    GOD 

When  Milton,  in  Samson  Agonistes,  makes  his 
hero  say,  speaking  of  physical  strength  — 

God,  when  he  gave  me  strength,  to  show  withal 
How  slight  the  gift  was,  hung  it  in  my  hair  — 

he  incidentally  expresses  a  time-worn  belief  of  the 
Church  that  physical  strength  is  unimportant. 
Without  regarding  this  as  a  Christian  idea,  we 
agree  that  the  whole  value  of  physical  health  is 
in  its  use.  In  these  days,  when  there  is  a  cult  of 
health  and  physical  development,  we  are  familiar 
with  people  who  live  to  preserve  their  health  or  to 
restore  it,  fidgeting  about  the  world  for  climates 
and  diets  and  exercises  —  people  whose  lives  grow 
more  and  more  insignificant,  until,  should  they 
attain  to  the  utmost  physical  perfection,  they  would 
have  reached  only  a  condition  which  they  would 
share  with  almost  all  animals.  Animal  health, 
which  has  no  dignity  as  an  end  for  human  life,  has 
dignity  and  worth  as  an  instrument  of  the  mind, 
and  is  its  necessary  instrument. 

1  The  substance  of  this  and  the  following  chapter  appeared 
as  an  article  in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  April  1906. 

232 


chap,  vi         THE   WILL   OF    GOD  233 

If  Jesus  was  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  he 
certainly  began  his  salvation  with  the  bodies  of 
men.  After  having  endured  in  his  own  person 
the  pains  of  hardship  and  exhaustion,  and  the 
special  pressure  of  temptation  upon  physical  weak- 
ness, he  began,  as  the  Revised  Version  has  it, 
publicly  to  cure  "all  manner  of  disease  and  all 
manner  of  sickness.  And  the  report  of  him  went 
forth  into  all  Syria :  and  they  brought  unto  him  all 
that  were  sick,  holden  with  divers  diseases  and 
torments,  possessed  with  devils,  and  epileptic,  and 
palsied,  and  he  healed  them."  He  gave  physical 
health,  and  cast  out  all  such  evil  forces  as  were  not 
under  the  control  of  the  human  will.  The  first 
manifestation  of  his  glory,  according  to  St.  John's 
Gospel,  was  at  a  marriage  which  he  blessed  by  his 
presence,  and  by  the  gift  of  an  abundant  supply 
of  the  wine  typical  of  that  era  of  exalted  physical 
life  which  it  was,  as  it  seemed,  his  mission  to 
proclaim. 

The  necessity  which  underlay  the  bestowal  of 
this  great  gift  of  vitalising  force  for  the  body  is 
explained  in  the  Johannine  Gospel  when  Jesus 
says  that  his  works  were  one  with  the  working  of 
the  Father  through  all  time.  "The  intention  of 
nature  to  heal,"  the  preference  of  nature  for  health, 
of  which  science  speaks,  are  but  paraphrases  for  the 
law  of  God,  the  will  of  God,  in  the  matter. 

Jesus  seems  to  have  taken  all  the  popular 
beliefs  of  his  era,  as  far  as  he  thought  they  rep- 
resented truth,  and  striven  to  bless  and  brake 
them  for  the  multitude.  He  took  the  common 
belief  in  marvellous  cures,  and  transmuted  it  into 


234    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

a  higher  doctrine  of  the  power  of  man  and  the 
invariable  will  of  God.  He  taught  that  such  cures 
were  (i)  the  direct  action  of  the  finger  of  God; 
(2)  the  natural  sequence  to  a  definite  attitude  in 
the  mind  of  man  —  not  the  mind  of  the  healer,  but 
of  the  sufferer  or  those  responsible  for  him.  The 
condition  on  which  man  could  receive  in  his  body 
more  of  the  overflowing  vitality  of  God  he  freely 
preached,  which  was  simply  the  faith  appertaining 
to  the  cure. 

Supposing  the  sort  of  cures  Jesus  worked  to 
have  been,  as  has  been  so  clamorously  asserted, 
actions  on  nature  from  beyond  the  region  of  nature, 
nothing  would  be  more  remarkable  than  that  the 
condition  he  required  should  have  been  this,  and 
this  only.  He  did  not  demand  any  moral  standard, 
or  the  forming  of  any  moral  purpose;  he  did  not 
ask  for  any  loyalty  to  his  kingdom.  The  body 
was  made  whole  in  every  case  of  manifest  desire  or 
need,  whether  or  not  the  desire  extended  to  and 
procured  spiritual  blessing,  and  without  any 
moralising  on  the  uses  of  this  form  of  adversity. 
In  several  cases  warnings  were  added  which  showed 
all  too  clearly  how  little  was  to  be  expected  for  the 
future  of  those  who  had  been  cured.  Thus  it 
can  hardly  be  supposed  by  the  most  didactically- 
minded  reader  that  any  work  of  "spiritual"  grace 
was  wrought  on  the  lepers  who  never  even  gave 
thanks.  Where  Jesus  failed  to  evoke  the  psychic 
condition  required,  as  at  Nazareth,  he  was  the  first 
to  proclaim  that  the  law  under  which  he  worked 
was  unalterable.  But  the  faith  which  conditioned 
the  action  of  God  in  merely  curing  the  body  seems 


chap,  vi         THE    WILL    OF    GOD  235 

to  have  been  so  elementary  that  even  in  faithless 
Nazareth  he  could  cure  a  few  sick  folk. 

The  action  of  Jesus  in  devoting  so  large  a  part 
of  his  short  ministry  to  the  healing  of  the  body, 
and  his  readiness  to  heal  apartfrom  any  qualification 
except  the  desire  or  need  of  the  sufferer,  contra- 
dict two  conventional  Christian  ideas,  —  that  bodily 
welfare  is  unimportant,  and  that  bodily  healing 
was  regarded  by  Jesus  as  merely  the  prelude  to 
moral  reformation. 

But,  it  will  be  said,  surely  pain  is  necessary  and 
salutary  because  it  is  the  consequence  and  punish- 
ment and  cure  of  sin  in  the  individual  and  in 
the  race;  Jesus  cannot  have  dissociated  pain 
and  sin. 

To  this  it  may  be  replied  that  it  seems 
impossible  to  justify  suffering  as  a  cure  for  sin 
when  experience  shows  it  is  quite  as  often  a  cause 
of  sin.  Further,  we  have  to  reckon  with  the 
striking  fact  that  Jesus  plainly  discountenanced  the 
doctrine  that  suffering  was  the  consequence  of  sin 
in  the  sufferer;  and,  in  harmony  with  this,  we 
have  the  fact,  noticed  in  a  former  chapter,  that 
suffering  entailed  by  sin  does  not  come  to  the 
guilty  only,  or  to  them  in  proportion  to  their 
guilt.  But  our  contention  here  is  not  that  sin  and 
suffering  are  by  Jesus  dissociated,  or  can  be 
dissociated,  but  rather  that  they  are  so  closely 
associated  as  to  be  reciprocal  parts  of  one  great 
fact,  and  both  to  be  warred  against  as  offensive  to 
God  and  inimical  to  man. 

The  salvation  of  the  inner  life,  which  we 
believe  lasts  beyond  death,  by  union  with  the  life 


236    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

of  God,  is  to  the  religious  mind  so  much  more 
important  than  the  salvation  of  the  body  that  we 
cannot  believe  that  Jesus,  who  was,  if  nothing 
more,  the  world's  supreme  religious  genius,  would 
have  given  half  his  attention  to  the  salvation  of 
this  earthly  body  unless  he  had  believed  it  to  be 
essential  to  the  full  salvation  of  the  spirit.  Every 
Christian  believes  in  one  sense  that  health  of  body 
is  necessary  to  the  perfection  of  spiritual  life, 
because  he  cannot  think  of  a  future  salvation 
without  the  idea  of  perfection  in  a  body  or  the 
equivalent  of  a  body.  It  must  be  evident  to  the 
open  mind  that  there  is  very  little  in  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  that  can  even  suggest  that  he  encouraged 
men  to  hope  for  a  future  salvation  except  as 
they  experience  it  in  this  world;  and  the  best 
Christian  thought  of  every  age,  more  especially 
of  our  own  day,  is  eager  to  believe  that  salvation 
of  the  spirit  is  offered  to  us  in  this  life.  But  we 
are  in  the  throes  of  a  transitional  period,  and  we 
have  not  yet  widely  realised  that  if  some  perfect 
vehicle  is  necessary  in  the  future  to  perfection  of 
the  spirit,  so  a  healthy  body  must  be  necessary 
now  to  the  highest  degree  of  spiritual  health 
attainable  in  this  life.  V/e  are  endeavouring  to  per- 
petuate false  ideals  of  spiritual  health,  —  ideals  con- 
sistent with  bodily  weakness  and  disease  —  because 
high  spiritual  attainments  were  certainly  reached 
by  the  saints  in  a  period  when  bodily  strength  was 
ignorantly  supposed  to  be  a  hindrance  to  spiritual 
attainment.  Our  religious  prejudices  are  still  fed 
by  the  eminent  devotion  that  we  find  in  the 
memoirs  of  mediaeval  ascetics,  because  we  have 


chap,  vi         THE   WILL   OF   GOD  237 

not  realised  that  their  spiritual  life  became  lusty  in 
spite  of,  not  because  of,  their  neglect  of  the  body. 
A  corporate  prejudice  is  always  the  path  of  least 
resistance  for  the  individual  mind;  and  yet,  at  the 
door  of  our  understanding  the  Christ  would  seem 
to  wait,  in  simplicity  offering  a  perfectly  natural, 
because  a  perfectly  divine,  salvation.  He  has 
summoned  many  messengers  who  call  to  us  with 
many  voices  to  open  and  let  this  salvation  in. 

In  the  first  place  we  have  the  voice  of 
philosophy,  emphasising  the  essential  oneness  of 
body  and  mind.  Take  the  words  of  our  leading 
English  psychologist: 

"To  regard  mind  as  the  collateral  product  of 
its  own  external  perceptions  is  simply  to  invert 
the  facts.  One  might  as  well  say  that  reflections 
produce  their  own  mirror,  or  that  houses  evolve 
architects.  We  are  led,  in  a  word,  to  doubt  that 
mind  and  matter  can  be  dual  realities,  either 
phenomenal  or  ontal."  And  again,  "Since  all 
that  we  know  and  feel  and  do,  all  our  facts  and 
theories,  all  our  emotions  and  ideals  and  ends, 
may  be  included  in  this  one  term  —  experience,  it 
is  by  raising  this  question  as  to  the  nature  of 
experience  that,  as  I  think,  we  shall  see  the 
untenability  of  dualism."  * 

Next  let  us  hear  what  medical  science  has  to 
say: 

"My  contention  simply  is  that  from  the  stand- 
point of  general  pathology  all  normal  and  morbid 
mental  phenomena   must  be  regarded   merely  as 

1  Prof.  James  Ward,  Sc.D.,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism, 
vol.  ii.  pp.  106,  no. 


238    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

the  expression  of  the  functional  reaction  of  the 
organ  concerned."  * 

Next  we  come  to  the  opinion  of  a  physiologist. 

"A  reflex  has  already  taken  place  when  the 
motor  reaction  of  a  cell  is  brought  under  the 
influence  of  an  irritant.  .  .  .  The  gesture  by 
which  we  mechanically  respond  to  the  bow  of 
another  person  is  a  reflex,  an  almost  unconscious 
reflex  when  we  bow  abstractedly,  a  more  complex 
reflex  when  we  rapidly  take  in  by  the  mind's  eye 
the  motives  that  prompted  this  act  of  politeness. 
And  always  and  everywhere,  whether  it  is  a  case 
of  the  action  of  the  most  humble  organ  or  of 
the  most  exalted  workings  of  our  mind,  it  is  just 
the  same  mechanism.  ...  A  compliment  tickles 
our  self-esteem  and  influences  our  determinations. 
A  cutting  word  excites  our  wrath  and  makes  our 
blood  boil.  The  involuntary  gesture  is  associated 
with  our  mental  reactions.  .  .  .  Physiology  must 
undertake  the  work  of  pursuing  the  study  of  these 
reactions  of  the  organism,  whether  they  have  to 
do  with  nutrition  and  the  ordinary  reproduction 
of  all  living  beings,  or  with  the  simple  psychic 
facts  that  are  observed  in  animals,  or  the  marvellous 
mechanism  of  the  human  mind  in  its  highest 
manifestations.   .   .   . 

"The  simple  idea  of  absolute  or  relative  human 
liberty  leads  us  to  establish  an  essential  difference 
between  a  fault  of  character  and  a  mental  malady. 
This  distinction,  and  I  cannot  repeat  it  too  often, 
is    artificial    and    untenable.       At    what    degree 

1  From  paper  read  before  the  British  Medical  Association, 
1901,  by  W.  Ford  Robertson,  M.D.,  pp.  67,  82-3. 


chap,  vi         THE    WILL    OF    GOD  239 

do  indecision,  irritability,  impressionability,  and 
emotional  disturbances  become  sicknesses  ?  Are 
sorrow  and  pessimism  faults  or  illnesses  ?  In  the 
mental  domain  it  is  still  more  impossible  to  try 
to  make  this  distinction.  It  seems  only  to  exist 
when  one  is  looking  at  the  extremes.  It  seems 
normal  to  us  to  be  sad  when  we  lose  a  friend,  to 
be  discouraged  in  the  presence  of  failure;  but  we 
regard  anybody  as  diseased  who  commits  suicide 
in  order  to  escape  the  perplexities  to  which  we 
are  all  subjected.  We  all  have  our  periods  of 
indecision,  which  often  appear  exaggerated  to  the 
eyes  of  others;  but  we  send  a  patient  to  a 
physician  when  he  passes  hours  in  agonising 
perplexity  without  being  able  to  decide  whether 
he  will  change  his  shirt  to-day  or  to-morrow.  .  .  . 
Properly  speaking,  then,  psychology  is  only  a 
chapter  of  physiology,  of  biology/'  * 

Or  let  us  listen  to  the  cry  of  the  practical 
religious  reformer.  The  Jesuit  tells  us  that  if  he 
has  the  custody  of  a  child  for  its  first  seven  years, 
by  God's  help  he  will  form  its  life;  and  he  does 
it.  Who  can  hold  a  child  morally  responsible 
for  the  environment  of  its  earlier  years  ?  The 
revivalist  cries,  "Give  me  crowds,  and  music,  and 
power  of  speech  by  which  to  excite  their  sensi- 
bilities, and  God  will  snap  the  chains  of  habit 
and  education  that  hold  many  individuals  in  the 
crowd,  and  start  them  on  a  new  life  from  which 
they  will  not  revert;"  and  it  is  done.  Yet  the 
hour  and  the  music  and  the  oratory  are  to  men 
thus  converted  mere  physical  accidents. 

1  Dr.  Paul  Dubois,  Psychic  Treatment  of  Nervous  Disorders* 


24o    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

Mind,  independent  of  brain,  is  an  assumption 
made  because,  on  the  whole,  the  functions  of  body 
and  brain  account  for  the  self  less  adequately  than 
does  the  assumption  of  mind.  Mind,  thought  of 
apart,  is  hypothetical  just  as  God  is  hypothetical, 
and  we  may  add,  just  as  free  will  is  hypothetical. 
All  these  conceptions  are  in  the  region  of  faith. 
We  believe  in  the  freedom  of  our  wills,  though 
determinism  seems  to  be  a  fact  of  knowledge. 
We  believe  that  mind  can  separate  from  body, 
but  have  no  knowledge  of  the  abstraction  called 
"the  soul/' 

We  may  be  bewildered  by  the  different  stand- 
points from  which  our  modern  schools  are  showing 
us  this  mystery,  asserting  the  oneness  of  spirit 
and  body  in  various  connections,  but  we  can  no 
longer  set  aside  their  many  voices.  One  section 
of  them  tells  us  that  the  criminal  is  a  criminal 
because  of  the  defective  bodily  tissue  that  he  has 
inherited,  and  therefore  it  is  cruelty  to  attribute  to 
him  any  personal  moral  failure,  or  punish  him 
as  a  delinquent.  Another  set  are  telling  us  that, 
because  parents  will  certainly  transmit  their  own 
sins  in  defective  physique  to  their  children,  their 
moral  responsibility  is  heightened  by  that  know- 
ledge and  extends,  not  only  to  the  necessity  of  a 
higher  moral  life,  but  to  the  need  for  the  most 
hygienic  life,  and  that  if  they  refuse  to  act  up  to 
this  responsibility  they  should  be  judged  and 
treated  as  criminals.  Another  set  are  telling  us 
that,  because  our  every  fault  is  the  result  of  some 
morbid  functioning  in  the  brain-cells,  health 
rather  than  spiritual  life  is  the  counsel  of  per- 


chap,  vi         THE   WILL   OF    GOD  241 

fection;  while  another  and  ever-growing  school 
is  declaring  that  most  of  our  diseases  proceed 
from  the  morbid  action  of  the  brain,  which  is 
caused  by  morbid  thoughts  under  the  control  of 
the  will,  and  that,  by  calling  in  the  aid  of  religion 
or  philosophy  or  morals,  we  can  so  exercise  healthy 
thoughts  as  to  cure  our  bodies  and  keep  them  in 
health.  Who  shall  tell  us  the  difference  between 
the  spiritual  and  physical  life  ?  It  would  take  too 
long  to  tell  the  innumerable  aspects  in  which  the 
unity  of  mind  and  matter  is  forcing  itself  upon  us. 

The  bearing  of  this  unity  upon  the  religious 
theory  of  life  is  very  close.  If  physical  evil 
produces  moral  evil  we  can  no  longer  believe  that 
a  God  to  whom  moral  evil  is  abhorrent  is  the 
author  of  our  physical  afflictions.  Either  moral 
evil  must  be  within  the  scheme  of  God's  special 
providence  for  the  soaring  soul,  or  else  physical 
evil  cannot  be  part  of  his  providence.  If  we 
ought,  in  the  name  of  all  that  is  holy,  to  resign 
ourselves  to  bodily  disease  as  his  will,  we  ought  to 
resign  ourselves  to  sinfulness  for  the  same  reasons. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  calls  us,  in  his  name  and 
by  his  strength,  to  resist  sin  because  it  is  loathsome 
to  him,  we  must,  for  the  same  reason,  resist  disease. 
If  the  salvation  from  sin  is  by  faith  and  through 
the  energy  of  his  supernatural  life,  we  must,  to 
hold  him  consistent,  believe  that  he  offers  the 
same  energy  of  supernatural  life  to  be  utilised  by 
our  faith  against  what  is  only  another  aspect  of 
sin. 

Nor  can  we,  with  any  consistency,  distinguish 
between  sin  and  the  bodily  results  of  sin  by  the 


242    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

argument  that  it  is  his  will  that  we  suffer  the 
results  because  the  race  has  sinned.  Take,  for 
example,  the  case  of  a  good  man  in  the  prime  of 
life,  living  well  by  all  the  laws  of  hygiene,  morals, 
and  religion,  who  finds  himself  suddenly  attacked 
by  some  hideous  organic  disease  that  cannot  be 
attributed  to  his  mode  of  life.  The  religious 
theory  is  that  God  sends  the  disease  in  order  to 
do  a  work  of  grace  in  his  soul  which  could  not 
otherwise  be  done.  If  the  man  be  in  a  gracious 
condition  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  will  be  very 
conscious  of  unique  nearness  to  God  in  the 
extremity  of  his  need.  Real,  vital,  as  this  ex- 
perience in  itself  is,  it  proves  nothing  beyond 
itself.  These  hours  of  unique  consciousness  of 
God's  presence  —  what  are  they  ?  Is  a  good  man 
really  nearer  to  God  at  one  time  than  at  another  ? 
His  consciousness  of  God's  presence  is  due  to 
the  intense  attention  that  he  devotes  to  knocking 
at  the  door  of  God's  own  place,  to  seeking  his 
face,  to  asking  for  his  grace.  Was  he  incapable 
in  health  of  devoting  this  attention  ?  Is  it 
necessary  to  believe  that  God  requires  the  whirl- 
wind of  emotion  and  the  fire  of  pain  in  which  to 
speak,  and  that  in  the  quiet  monotony  of  health 
and  the  normal  exercise  of  benevolent  activities 
for  the  spread  of  the  kingdom  he  cannot  make 
his  still  small  voice  heard  ?  In  the  meantime 
the  sick  man's  benevolent  activities  for  the  world 
are  stopped;  the  benevolent  activities  of  his 
household  are  withdrawn  from  the  world  and 
centred  upon  him;  the  physical  health  of  every 
one    closely    connected    with    him    is    lowered    by 


chap,  vi         THE    WILL    OF    GOD  243 

contact  with  pain  and  disease;  the  subjects  of 
this  contact  are  by  such  lowering  made  more 
liable  to  such  disease,  even  if  no  contagious 
germs  escape.  Is  the  world  so  thoroughly  saved 
that  it  can  be  through  any  will  of  God  or  his 
Christ  that  good  men  and  women  who  are  spend- 
ing their  lives  for  its  salvation  must  concentrate 
all  their  energies  in  enduring  or  curing  or  solacing 
disease,  in  order  that  some  vital  hours  of  personal 
communion  with  God  may  be  attained  ?  Nor, 
because  such  is  the  present  order  of  things,  ought 
that  mere  fact  to  induce  the  Christian  mind  to 
believe  that  the  order  is  of  God.  "Whatever  is, 
is  right"  must  apply  to  all  vice  if  it  is  accepted 
as  a  principle. 

How  often  are  we  confronted  with  the  saying 
that  it  is  the  good  and  the  lovely  who  die  young, 
the  useful  and  the  loving  who  are  cut  off  in  their 
prime,  while  the  useless  and  crabbed,  the  worse 
than  useless  and  worse  than  sour,  live  on.  This 
impression  is,  no  doubt,  a  case  of  the  fallacy  of 
positive  instances;  but  it  is  only  an  over-state- 
ment of  the  certain  fact  that  death  and  misfortune 
assail  and  disable  those  who  are  helping  in  every 
good  cause  as  often  as  those  who  are  hindering 
the  progress  of  the  race.  How  does  this  bear  on 
our  faith  in  a  God  who  wills  and  works  for  our 
moral  progress  ?  The  record  of  every  Christian 
mission  shows  how  large  a  proportion  of  the 
workers,  perhaps  after  long  preparation,  fall 
prematurely  on  the  field,  or  are  rendered  useless 
by  accidents  or  diseases  which  might  occur  any- 
where  or   to   men   engaged    in   any   enterprise  — 


244    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

misfortunes  not  necessarily  involved  in  that 
personal  conflict  with  evil  which  constitutes  some 
degree  of  martyrdom,  and  which  may  be,  even  in 
failure,  a  moral  triumph.  All  political  and  com- 
mercial records  show  how  many  are  the  forms  of 
disaster  that  dog  the  steps  of  every  noble  enterprise, 
as  well  as  the  particular  form  of  failure  which  its 
nobility  challenges.  When  we  reflect  on  the 
attribution  of  all  this  to  the  divine  attention  we 
cannot  but  be  vividly  reminded  of  our  Lord's 
words,  "Every  kingdom  divided  against  itself  is 
brought  to  desolation." 


CHAPTER  VII 

HISTORY   OF    HEALTH    BY    FAITH 

We  have  every  evidence  that  the  apostles  believed 
without  question  that  all  the  children  of  the  king- 
dom, to  whom  they  in  their  turn  ministered,  had 
a  right  to  this  least  part  of  the  great  salvation,  the 
initial  blessing  of  bodily  health ;  and  the  last  verses 
of  St.  Mark's  Gospel,  with  all  other  later  additions 
to  the  Gospels  on  the  same  topic,  prove  clearly  the 
general  faith  of  the  early  Church,1  viz.  that  every 
believer  was  to  have  health  in  a  degree  that  would 
render  him  immune  from  all  poisons,  and  give  him 
the  power  of  presence  which  can  evoke  self-govern- 
ment in  those  who  have  lost  mental  or  bodily 
control  of  themselves. 

1  The  fathers  and  historians  of  the  first  five  centuries  clearly 
testify  to  the  power  of  the  Church  to  heal  by  faith.  From  among 
them  take  only  two  in  addition  to  Tertullian,  already  quoted. 

Irenaeus,  second  century,  as  quoted  by  Eusebius :  "Far  are 
they,  the  Churches,  from  raising  the  dead  in  the  manner  the  Lord 
and  his  apostles  did,  by  prayer,  yet  even  among  the  brethren 
frequently,  in  a  case  of  necessity,  when  a  whole  church  has 
united  in  much  fasting  and  prayer,  the  spirit  has  returned  to 
the  exanimated  body,  and  the  man  has  been  granted  to  the 
prayers  of  the  saints."  And  again:  "Some  most  certainly  and 
truly  cast  out  demons  ...  as  others  heal  the  sick  by  the  im- 
position of  hands,  and  moreover,  as  we  said  above,  even  the  dead 

245 


246    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

Yet  we  quickly  discover  that  in  many  com- 
munities the  blessing  was  not  realised;  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  Church  of  Corinth,  where,  not  a 
lifetime  after  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
many  were  weak  and  sickly  and  many  died 
prematurely.  St.  Paul  reproaches  the  Corinthians 
with  this,  and  points  out  the  cause  (i  Cor.  xi. 
29-30).  If  the  touch  of  Christ's  body  in  the 
sacrament  had  always  been  accepted  by  faith  to 
the  maintenance  of  the  health  that  the  body 
needed  to  enable  it  to  glorify  him,  the  holiest  as 
well  as  the  basest  must  have  used  the  temple  of 
God  more  reverently,  and  could  not  have  supposed 
austerities  to  be  for  the  welfare  of  the  soul. 

For  centuries  before  the  Christian  era  the  doc- 
trine that  sin  emanated  from  what  was  material 
had  been  implied  in  the  philosophies  of  India  and 
Greece,  and  had  pressed  into  the  Semitic  religions 
from  both  sides.  It  had  had  a  large  effect  upon 
the  most  progressive  Judaic  thinkers,  and  early 
tainted  the  teaching  of  the  Christian  Church,  which 
it  afterward  permeated.  As  Dr.  Bruce  remarks, 
Jesus  did  not  teach  this.     "He  is  reported  to  have 

have  been  raised  and  continued  with  us  many  years.  ...     As 
the  church  has  freely  received  she  also  freely  ministers." 

Eusebius,  early  in  fourth  century:  "Who  is  he  who  knows 
not  how  delightful  it  is  to  us  that  through  the  name  of  our 
Saviour,  coupled  with  prayers  that  are  pure,  we  cast  out  every 
kind  of  demon  ?  And  thus  the  word  of  our  Saviour,  and  the 
doctrine  which  is  from  him,  have  made  us  all  to  be  greatly  su- 
perior to  the  power  which  is  invisible,"  etc.  And  he  adds  the 
reason  why  these  gifts  had  declined  in  the  Church  in  his  time  — 
namely,  not  that  the  heritage  of  miracle  had  ceased,  but  that 
the  Churches  were  "unworthy"  of  them. 


chap,  vii         HEALTH    BY    FAITH  247 

said  to  the  priests  and  elders:  'The  publicans  and 
the  harlots  shall  go  into  the  kingdom  of  God  before 
you.'  The  grounds  of  this  comparative  estimate 
are  obvious.  The  sins  of  the  one  class  had  their 
seat  and  source  in  the  flesh,  leaving  the  inner  man 
to  a  certain  extent  untouched;  the  sins  of  the 
Pharisees  were  vices  of  the  spirit,  sin  had  possessed 
the  whole  spiritual  nature.  ...  In  the  light  of 
this  judgment  of  Christ,  and  its  grounds,  we  see 
how  far  he  was  from  entertaining  the  view  as  to 
the  nature  and  origin  of  sin  held  by  the  Greeks 
and  by  deists,  that  it  has  its  seat  in  the  flesh,  and 
makes  its  appearance  in  human  conduct  because 
man  is  a  being  possessed  of  a  material  organisation 
which  exercises  a  misleading,  disturbing  influence 
upon  his  rational  nature.  He  rather  believed  that 
sin  appears  only  in  mitigated  form  when  it  springs 
out  of  bodily  appetites  and  passions,  and  that  it  is 
seen  in  its  true  malignity  when  it  has  its  origin  in 
the  soul,  and  reveals  an  evil  will,  a  selfish  heart, 
and  a  perverted  conscience."  x 

Had  the  Church  maintained  the  view  that 
health  was  the  heritage  of  the  children  of  the 
Lord,  Christendom,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  would 
have  been  saved  from  the  distress  caused  by  the 
supposed  antagonism  between  the  laws  of  nature 
and  the  laws  of  grace.  Had  the  children  of  the 
light  of  faith  accepted  the  teaching  of  Jesus  that 
all  good  is  of  God,  the  light  which  is  their  special 
inheritance  would  have  made  them  love  all  light. 
They  would  not  have  stoned  the  prophets  of 
scientific  light  that  God  raised  up  time  and  again, 

1  Apologetics,  by  A.  B.  Bruce,  D.D.,  pp.  57-58. 


248    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

even  in  dark  ages;  and  the  world  would  not  have 
waited  for  modern  science  before  it  learnt  that 
there  is  a  distinct  "intention"  in  nature  towards 
health  —  in  other  words,  that  the  divine  sustaining 
force  intends  health.  The  source  of  the  Church's 
error  and  lack  has  always  been  unbelief;  and 
having,  through  unbelief,  mislaid  the  gift  of 
health,  she  next  pointed  to  her  own  experience  to 
prove  that  God  had  withdrawn  it.  But  "kings 
give,  they  do  not  lend";  and  the  gift,  once  given, 
must  be  hers.  Confidently  holding  to  the  full 
salvation  of  her  Saviour,  she  could  never  have 
assimilated  the  belief  that  physical  nature  was  in 
some  peculiar  way  the  home  of  the  devil,  and  half 
her  warfare  would  have  been  accomplished  ere  it 
was  begun.  Her  force  would  have  been  more 
steadfastly  directed  against  the  real  strongholds  of 
the  enemy,  which  to-day  still  stand  strong. 

Disregard  of  bodily  pain  had  no  part  in  the 
mind  of  Christ;  but  indifference  to  pain,  even  the 
seeking  of  pain  to  develop  fortitude,  were  aspects 
of  a  virtue  much  esteemed  by  the  heathen  world. 
It  was,  indeed,  the  tenderness  of  Jesus  Christ 
which,  as  much  if  not  more  than  anything  else, 
made  it  difficult  for  the  heathen  world  to  accept 
him  as  a  hero;  and  it  is  the  legacy  of  these 
heathen  sentiments  that  makes  his  precepts  seem 
impracticable  to  us  to-day.  Had  Jesus  pandered 
in  the  least  degree  to  that  insensibility  to  suffering 
which  every  savage  and  all  ascetics  seek  after,  and 
to  the  belief  in  force,  the  earthly  synonym  for 
government,  he  would  to  that  degree  have  wor- 
shipped the  prince  of  this  world  and  attained 
worldly  dominion  more  easily. 


chap,  vii         HEALTH    BY   FAITH  249 

Where  he  performed  God's  will  perfectly  the 
Church  failed,  and  soon  depicted  her  Saviour  as  a 
God  so  austere  that  a  feminine  object  of  adoration 
was  felt  to  be  necessary.  With  a  great  and  ever- 
increasing  number  of  heathen  converts,  indifference 
to  pain  came  early  to  be  regarded  as  a  Christian 
virtue,  and  the  infliction  of  pain  a  Christian 
necessity :  asceticism  and  persecution  stalk  hand 
in  hand  across  the  fields  of  Christendom.  The 
same  law  of  the  power  of  mind  over  body  which 
at  the  beneficent  command  of  Christ  worked 
health,  began  under  different  direction  to  produce 
marvels  of  a  different  sort:  the  choice  of  horrid 
austerities,  visions,  levitations,  such  phenomena  as 
that  of  the  stigmata  —  all  these  became  manifesta- 
tions of  the  spiritual  life  which  we  do  not  now  con- 
sider wholesome.  As  they  were  supposed  to  be  the 
will  of  God  quite  as  much  as  were  marvels  of  heal- 
ing, which  still  incidentally  accompanied  them,  it 
became  necessary  to  suppose  that  God,  who 
worked  these  miracles,  aimed,  not  at  health  or  at 
ill-health,  but  at  marvels.  Thus,  when  unhealthy 
results  of  religious  fervour  came  to  be  classed  with 
the  normal  benefits  of  faith,  both  kinds  of  evidence 
of  what  was  called  supernatural  power  were  con- 
stantly simulated,  fell  into  disrepute  with  the 
thoughtful,  and,  except  as  temporary  and  localised 
manifestations,  gradually  ceased.  Although,  in 
dusty  archives,  the  Church  has  preserved  theoretic 
belief  in  her  power  to  heal  the  sick,  she  never 
practically  admits  that  it  is  her  duty  to  heal  them. 

In  this  general  gloom  God's  Spirit  of  truth 
and  blessing,  always  pressing  to  enter  the  heart 


250   GOD'S    CITADEL   ON    EARTH 

of  humanity,  is  seen  in  those  movements  which 
rose  to  assert  the  claim  of  nature  to  be  instinct 
with  God  and  the  claim  of  man's  body  to 
reverence.  Prophets  of  physical  science  appeared 
who  discerned  unity  under  variety,  order  under 
confusion,  truth  under  all  that  was  phenomenal 
—  conceptions  ever  denoting  a  supreme  object 
of  faith.  The  Church  refused  to  identify  her 
God  with  that  underlying  reason  and  power 
which  the  inspired  prophets  of  science,  dimly 
at  first,  discerned,  and  served  with  the  faith 
of  martyrs.  The  reason  of  her  refusal  was 
fear;  the  reason  of  her  fear  was  lack  of  faith. 
She  was  holding  on  to  the  Source  of  Faith  with 
only  one  hand;  the  other  hung  withered  at  her 
side.  In  practice  she  had  pushed  aside  the  actual, 
exquisite,  marvellous  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
the  individual  body  of  flesh;  she  must,  pursuing 
this  path,  set  aside  the  individual  brain  and  mind, 
the  light  of  reason.  Having  lost  reverence  for 
the  individual  body,  her  conception  of  the  corpor- 
ate body  became  artificial,  including  and  excluding 
too  much;  and,  despising  the  individual  mind,  her 
method  of  ascertaining  the  corporate  mind  became 
ineffectual.  The  faith  of  individualism  and  the 
faith  of  science  joined  forces  throughout  Christen- 
dom, and  fought  against  the  cult  of  the  withered 
hand  and  all  that  want  of  faith  which  makes  for 
bondage  and  a  partial  salvation. 

While  the  anguish  of  this  war  was  and  is,  we 
always  find  in  secluded  spots  the  recognition  of 
the  revelation  that  would  have  hindered  this 
unnatural  strife.     A  series  of  local  communities 


chap,  vii         HEALTH    BY    FAITH  251 

arose  which  determinedly  held  the  belief  that  the 
health  of  the  body  was  the  will  of  Christ,  and  to 
be  claimed  by  prayer.  Examining  what  records 
there  are  of  these  in  the  light  of  those  more 
modern  sects  which  exhibit  faith-cures  for  our 
inspection  to-day,  there  cannot  be,  for  the  un- 
prejudiced Christian,  much  doubt  that  wherever 
this  part  of  Christian  faith  has  been  exercised, 
many  mighty  works  of  healing  have  taken  place. 
Let  us,  then,  note  carefully  that  when  a  number 
of  people  who  believed  that  health  could  be  claimed 
as  the  will  of  God  gathered  together,  shut  up  to 
their  own  society  either  by  some  separating 
doctrine  or  by  persecution,  faith  rose  to  an  un- 
wavering height,  and  was  crowned  by  the  divine 
response.  A  shrine  or  relic  that  evoked  the 
necessary  faith  has  always  produced  the  same 
results.  As  an  example,  take  the  miracles  of 
healing  at  the  tomb  of  the  Jansenist  Abbe  Paris 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  said  by  Hume  to  have 
been  as  well  attested  as  the  best  evidence  in  a 
learned  age  could  make  them.  There  is  evidence 
that  the  same  thing  happened  among  the  early 
Moravians  and  Quakers;  and,  here  and  there, 
within  or  without  sectarian  communities,  healers 
arose  who  had  the  power  of  so  convincing  and 
leading  other  men's  minds  and  emotions  that  in 
many  cases  they  could  produce  in  others  the 
certainty  which  they  themselves  possessed.  Luther 
himself,  though  like  all  the  reformers  prejudiced 
against  Popish  "miracles,"  did  by  prayer  cast  out 
demons  and  recover  men  from  the  point  of  death. 
If  any  one  will  examine  critically,  yet  reverently,  the 


252  GOD'S    CITADEL   ON    EARTH    book  m 

life  of  the  faith-healing  communities  of  to-day,  he 
will  find  that  the  same  circumstances  are  necessary 
to  bring  about  any  fair  proportion  of  such  cures  as 
are  variously  called  instances  of  "the  divine  heal- 
ing," or  "the  faith-cure,"  or  "the  mind-cure." 
Either  the  subject  must  enter  into  the  community 
and,  by  accepting  its  separating  doctrines,  close 
eyes  and  ears  to  the  larger  Church  without,  or 
he  must  be  under  the  constant  and  prolonged 
influence  of  some  individual  who  holds  the  con- 
viction with  enthusiasm,  or  he  must  visit  some 
shrine,  or  be  in  a  solitary  place,  as  some  missionaries 
and  travellers  are,  or  be  isolated  by  disposition, 
circumstance,  or  infirmity.  Yet,  although  there 
are  many  successes,  now,  as  formerly,  the  result  of 
what  seems  to  be  absolute  faith  is  not  always 
health;  and  more  baffling  still  to  the  honest 
inquirer  is  the  fact  that  it  is  not  the  highest  type 
of  mind  or  character  that  most  frequently  receives 
sudden  or  obvious  accession  of  health. 

From  such  a  record  very  varying  inferences 
are  drawn,  even  by  those  who  realise  keenly  that 
the  Church  has  lost  and  is  losing  much  by  resisting 
this  part  of  the  gospel  of  Christ.  In  attempting 
an  explanation,  some  have  even  endeavoured  to 
classify  diseases  as  curable  or  non-curable  by  the 
Almighty !  Others  have  thought  to  make  the 
acquisition  of  health,  even  in  the  present  state  of 
the  Church,  the  test  of  spiritual  obedience,  and  in 
other  ways  to  make  the  available  evidence  prove 
more  or  less  than  it  does. 

Let  us  be  careful  neither  to  add  to  nor  subtract 
from  such  records  as  we  have.     If  we  would  draw 


chap,  vii         HEALTH    BY   FAITH  253 

a  right  inference  we  must  first  go  back  to  where 
the  true  faith  sprang,  where  the  Divine  Man 
grasped  God  with  both  hands,  bringing  together 
into  a  unity  within  human  ken  the  force  which 
animates  and  sustains  matter  and  the  voice  which 
speaks  to  the  conscience  of  man. 

We  find  that  Jesus  does  not  blame  the 
individual  for  lack  of  faith,  while  he  constantly 
reproves,  upbraids,  and  reproaches  his  race,  his 
generation,  and  the  religious  classes  in  the  nation, 
for  faithlessness.  Only  after  his  apostles  had 
lived  exclusively  in  his  companionship  for  some 
time  does  he  level  the  reproach  at  the  little  band; 
and  there  is  but  one  solitary  instance  in  which, 
before  his  death,  he  reproves  an  individual  for  the 
sin  of  doubt.  When  our  Lord  upbraids  the  Jews 
for  lack  of  faith,  he  does  it  on  the  ground  that 
the  national  movements  of  the  time,  especially  the 
preaching  of  John,  ought  to  have  raised  the 
general  level  of  faith.  The  paradox  of  individual 
and  corporate  faith  —  it  is  only  by  the  utmost  effort 
of  individuals  that  the  many  can  rise;  it  is  only 
by  the  rise  of  the  many  that  any  individual  can 
realise  the  fruit  of  his  effort  —  is  always  just  below 
the  surface  of  his  discourse.  Even  while  Jesus 
upbraids  his  fellow-countrymen  for  unbelief,  he 
freely  admits  that  their  ears  and  eyes  are  closed 
and  their  hearts  hardened  by  the  spirit  of  their 
generation;  he  ceaselessly  and  hopefully  exhorts 
the  individual  to  faith  or  praises  him  for  possessing 
it,  he  never  blames  him  for  want  of  faith ;  he  con- 
stantly blames  the  collective  soul  for  doubting, 
but  admits  that  his  exhortation  will  be  useless. 


254    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

Here  we  come  on  the  reality  of  the  corporate 
nature  of  religion,  and  knock  against  the  limit  of 
individual  responsibility  and  power.  In  religion, 
the  region  in  which  the  soul  gains  most  in  solitude 
with  God,  it  is  seen  to  be  most  dependent  on 
the  corporate  soul.  The  individual  or  strongest 
religious  purpose  cannot  rise  far  above  the  average 
level,  and  can  outstrip  by  very  little  the  nobler 
characters  of  his  time.  This  is  not  a  matter  for 
argument,  but  a  fact  of  history.  All  history 
shows  that  the  inspiration  of  the  giants  of  faith  is 
conditioned  by  the  mind  of  their  age.  That  all 
this,  which  our  Lord  recognised,  is  the  current 
thought  of  to-day  is  shown  by  the  frequent  use  of 
such  phrases  as  "  the  spirit  of  the  age,"  "  telepathy/' 
"the  war  fever,"  "esprit  de  corps." 

It  has  before  been  remarked  that  the  idea  of 
wonderful  cures  worked  by  those  specially  religious 
was  the  common  belief  in  Palestine  and  the  sur- 
rounding countries  at  the  time  of  Christ.  It  was, 
therefore,  not  more  difficult  then  for  the  individual 
to  rise  to  the  assured  expectation  of  bodily  health 
which  the  person  and  teaching  of  Jesus  evoked 
than  it  is  now  for  men  to  be  patriotic  when  a 
popular  war  makes  patriotism  rife,  or  to  show 
self-abnegation  at  a  time  when  great  calamity 
is  drawing  out  the  more  unselfish  virtues  of  the 
community.  The  case  became  different  where  a 
Christian  man  or  Christian  community  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  more  sceptical  heathen  element,  as, 
for  example,  in  the  case  of  St.  Paul  himself,  who 
was  often  obliged  to  conduct  his  solitary  warfare 
surrounded  by  unbelievers,  or  in  the  case  of  the 


chap,  vii         HEALTH    BY   FAITH  255 

Church  at  Corinth,  where  "  many  were  sick  "  ;  or 
later,  in  the  case  of  all  believers,  when  the  Church 
as  a  whole  had  practically  repudiated  any  duty 
with  regard  to  the  health  of  the  body. 

These  considerations  make  it  evident  why 
modern  sects  that  preach  the  healing  of  the  body 
by  faith  find  by  experiment  that  the  diseased 
person  must  be  surrounded  by  the  faithful  in  a 
community,  or  worked  upon  by  a  healer,  or,  in 
one  way  or  another,  isolated  from  the  common 
unbelief  of  the  mass.  They  also  explain  why 
higher  natures  that  have  the  widest  intellectual 
sympathy  are  seldom  at  present  the  subjects  of 
notable  "cures"  —  such  will  always,  by  their  power 
of  sympathy,  be  most  subject  to  the  woe  of  the 
common  mind.  To-day,  every  individual  who 
reasonably  accepts  the  salvation  of  the  body  is 
dragged  back  by  the  collective  soul  of  Christen- 
dom; and  men  of  the  five  talents,  large  in  under- 
standing and  heart,  are  least  able  to  brush  aside 
the  race  of  which  they  are  part.  They  do  not 
build  towers  upon  which  a  few  can  appear  to  be 
nearer  heaven;  rather  they  put  down  new  pave- 
ments in  the  city  of  God  among  men,  thus  raising 
the  whole  slowly.  Their  faith,  many  times  more 
fervent  than  that  of  the  bigot,  produces  a  less 
visible  but  much  greater  result.  When  the 
corporate  faith  reaches  a  higher  level,  the  gain 
of  the  whole  will  show  in  them  most  richly,  and 
in  them  will  find  its  culmination. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    BALANCE    OF    NATURE 

The  ethical  laws  of  the  kingdom  demand  that  a 
moral  miracle  be  worked  within  us.  The  physical 
powers  displayed  by  Jesus  as  characteristic  features 
of  that  kingdom  are  also  beyond  our  natural  reach, 
although  perhaps  not  so  far  beyond  as  its  moral 
requirements.  We  cannot  doubt  that  Jesus  meant 
these  two  sorts  of  heavenly  power  —  the  power  of 
obedience  to  the  law  of  love,  and  the  power  of 
working  the  physical  marvels  of  faith  —  to  be 
associated  as  a  double  revelation  of  God's  will  for 
men,  and  to  be  brought  into  clear  contrast  with 
human  powerlessness.  All  that  he  preached 
revealed  man's  moral  imperfection  in  the  strong 
sunlight  of  God,  as  in  spring  sunshine  an  old  coat 
shows  stains  and  rents  and  threadbare  patches 
that  we  had  not  suspected  in  the  gloom  of  winter; 
all  that  he  did  brought  out  man's  powerlessness 
to  cope  with  the  physical  nature  to  which  he  was 
bound. 

The  vision  of  physical  power  in  the  healing  of 
body  and  mind  and  in  control  over  the  things  of 
earth,  was  needed  to  enable  the  first  disciples  to 

256 


ch.  viii    THE    BALANCE    OF    NATURE    257 

trust  to  that  invisible  moral  force  which  could  so 
change  man's  moral  nature  that  the  impossible 
good  should  become  possible.  The  good  news 
which  Jesus  set  forth  was  that  God  was  willing 
and  able  to  work  with  man  and  in  man  to  pro- 
duce, not  only  pure  unhampered  moral  activity, 
but  also  superior  physical  power  to  be  its  support 
and  maintain  the  true  balance  of  human  nature. 
If  physical  power  does  not  grow  with  the  growth  of 
the  spiritual  nature,  ill  must  result,  and  as  a  plain 
matter  of  fact  it  does  result.  There  is  a  truth 
embedded  in  the  contention  of  the  materialistic 
medical  school  that  religion  is  detrimental  to 
health.  It  is  not  only  in  religious  manias  of 
various  sorts  that  it  is  illustrated.  Is  it  not  true 
that  the  sanest  family,  if  possessed  by  the  true 
religious  enthusiasm,  does  not  maintain  itself  in 
physical  vigour  or  increase  in  successive  genera- 
tions, but  rather  dwindles  in  numbers  and  in  force  ? 
We  see  this  phenomenon  around  us,  and  when  we 
hear  the  more  spiritually-minded  medical  school 
recommend  religion  as  an  aid  to  a  healthy  life 
we  are  not  surprised  that  they  limit  their  recom- 
mendation to  religion  of  a  moderate  sort  and 
degree.  They  warn  us  against  any  religious 
originality  or  depth  of  feeling  or  mystic  vision. 
We  are  bound  to  admit  that  the  facts  of  our 
present  physical  life  bear  out  the  warning. 

Yet  Professor  Seeley's  dictum,  "No  heart  is 
pure  that  is  not  passionate;  no  virtue  is  safe  that 
is  not  enthusiastic,"  l  stands  as  a  most  noble 
expression  of  the  truth   that  to   practise   a   nice 

1  Ecce  Homo,  chap.  i. 


258      GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

moderation  in  religion  is  to  be  something  much 
lower  than  irreligious.  The  excitement  of  the 
religious  crowd  gives  insight  into  the  things  of 
God,  gives  the  faith  that  accepts  God's  gift  of 
moral  and  physical  health;  ecstasy  and  agony  in 
private  prayer  have  their  uses  in  the  most  practical 
life  of  religious  benevolence;  from  their  secret 
is  learnt  the  art  of  blessing  the  world  openly. 
What  we  need  is,  not  to  guard  against  religious 
intensity,  but  to  seek  bodily  reinforcement.  If  it 
were  true  that  either  hunger  and  thirst  for  God  or 
bodily  health  and  social  well-being  must  be  sacri- 
ficed, we  would  defy  the  doctors  and  cast  away 
physical  welfare  without  a  sigh.  If  such  is  the 
choice  the  ascetic  is  right.  But  such  was  not  the 
choice  that  Jesus  offered.  He  came  to  unite  the 
forces  which  had  been  set  at  variance,  to  restore 
the  balance  of  human  nature.  It  is  this  better 
balance  of  which  we  now  feel  the  need  so  sorely. 
We  want  health  and  strength,  more  practical 
friendliness  with  the  laws  of  nature,  and  more 
strenuous  use  of  them  for  the  welfare  of  the  world. 
With  the  energies  of  physical  regeneration  work- 
ing in  him  and  through  him,  man  may  exercise  to 
the  full  all  his  forces  of  prayer,  in  the  strengthening 
of  which  lies  the  only  hope  of  individual  and  racial 
salvation. 

A  Church  which  for  insanity  and  hysteria, 
disease  and  infirmity,  can  offer  none  but  rare  and 
occasional  remedy,  which  goes  further  and  teaches 
that  these  are  God's  will  for  the  world,  is  unfit 
to  represent  the  Apostles  or  early  Fathers,  and 
certainly  does  not  represent  the  Christ.     It  cannot 


ch.  vin    THE    BALANCE    OF    NATURE    259 

be  honest,  it  cannot  be  pleasing  to  God,  to  laud 
Jesus  Christ  as  divine  and  at  the  same  time  teach 
that  God's  will  is  to  be  descried  and  accepted  in 
those  things  which  Jesus  taught  were  the  work  of 
the  Evil  One  and  to  be  abolished  by  Christian 
faith.  It  matters  nothing  here  whether  in  speak- 
ing of  the  kingdom  of  Satan  his  words  were 
parabolic  or  had  the  meaning  they  bear  on  their 
face;  he  certainly  meant  that  all  the  ills  that  flesh 
is  heir  to  were  against  the  will  of  God. 

Let  the  Church  seek  for  truth  in  the  right  way 
and  she  will  find  the  meaning  of  this  parable,  if 
parable  it  is.  When  she  accepts  the  authority  of 
Jesus  and  does  his  work,  she  will  by  degrees 
know  all  the  truth  she  needs  regarding  this  terrible 
fact  of  disease:  she  will  never  know  it  before. 
Jesus  pointed  to  the  prayer  of  faith.  How  many 
hours,  by  what  multitudes  of  people,  are  spent 
each  week  in  Christendom,  wailing  out  complaints 
to  God  and  repeating  cries  for  his  mercy  in 
temporal  things,  as  if  his  lack  of  mercy  was  the 
cause  of  all  our  privations  !  How  arrogant  is  the 
assumption,  how  unfaithful,  how  sad  !  When  the 
Church  puts  a  stop  to  this  insult  to  the  divine 
nature,  and  spends  the  same  time  in  expressing 
her  humble,  joyful  trust  that  the  power  of  Jesus 
will  be  made  operative  in  his  kingdom,  then,  and 
not  till  then,  will  she  have  taken  his  way. 

The  imitation  of  Jesus  includes  the  healing  of 
the  sick,  the  casting  out  of  devils,  the  feeding  of 
the  poor  with  enough  and  to  spare,  the  turning 
of  the  common  water  of  the  common  life  into 
the  wine  of  love.     This   imitation   is   obligatory, 


26o     GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

and  requires  from  first  to  last  something  much 
more  than  imitation.  It  requires  a  will  divine  in 
its  strength  —  as  much  stronger  than  that  which 
we  have  by  nature  as  the  will  of  Jesus  was  stronger 
than  ours,  God's  will  within  a  human  will,  strong 
enough  to  embrace  the  pain  of  the  world  and 
vanquish  death  and  all  its  powers,  a  resignation  of 
human  fear  and  timidity  to  God's  will  which 
works  life,  and  more  abundant  life,  for  all.  It  is 
not  by  reciting  the  creeds  of  the  past  and  girding 
at  those  who  reject  them,  and  certainly  not  by 
rejecting  them  as  the  result  of  some  transient 
position  of  the  schools,  that  the  Church  can  ever 
teach  the  world  to  believe.  She  must  so  rejoice 
in  God  her  Saviour  as  to  communicate  his  health, 
physical  and  moral,  to  the  sick  and  sinful,  until 
they  shall  be  compelled  by  experience  to  rise  up 
and  call  her  blessed. 

The  result  of  much  eclectic  Christianity,  which, 
although  it  fights  for  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, chooses  out  of  the  revelation  of  Christ  those 
points  of  teaching  and  practice  by  which  it  will 
abide,  has  been  a  fashion  of  taking  from  the  story 
all  that  is  not  consistent  with  a  modern  materialism. 
This  has  formed  a  religion  perfectly  comprehen- 
sible, but  on  all  sides  we  see  the  children  of  those 
who  hold  it  seeking  food  for  faith  in  the  large 
assumptions  of  a  dogmatic  pessimism  or  in  the 
more  cheerful  folly  of  preaching  that  there  is 
nothing  real  in  sin  or  sorrow.  Results  so  un- 
expected ought  surely  to  make  it  clear  that  we 
are  quite  incapable  of  knowing  what  effect  any 
doctrine  will  have  upon  the  nature  within  us  that 


ch.  viii    THE    BALANCE    OF    NATURE    261 

we  so  little  understand,  ought  surely  to  make  us 
humble  enough  to  accept  the  revelation  of  the 
Incarnation  in  its  entirety,  if  we  accept  it  at  all. 

If  health  of  body  and  volitional  power  is  the 
heritage  of  Christendom,  it  is  waiting  to  be  realised 
by  a  corporate  faith.  If  there  is  a  Divine  abhor- 
rence of  disease  and  all  forms  of  nervous  tyrannies 
and  mental  aberrations,  all  such  suffering  is  due, 
not  to  necessity,  but  to  the  lack  of  faith  in  the 
Church  at  large.  Many  of  the  noblest  children 
of  the  kingdom  are  to-day  reasonably  convinced 
that  the  procession  of  the  Spirit  of  God  manwards 
involves  health  of  body  and  power  of  will,  and 
yet  cannot  appropriate  the  health  because  of  the 
faithlessness  of  the  many.  Here,  then,  is  now 
the  first  necessity  of  the  higher  life,  the  individual 
and  corporate  faith  which  brings  the  significant 
and  sacred  experience  of  increased  bodily  power, 
a  power  that  will  make  all  spiritual  verities  more 
real. 

The  only  basis  for  such  a  faith  is  the  acknow- 
ledged will  of  God.  We  cannot  hold  it  and 
question  whether  it  is  God's  will  to  cure  one  man 
or  another.  No  shadow  cast  upon  the  world 
would  be  so  terrible  as  that  which  would  be  cast 
by  variableness  or  turning  about  of  the  will  which 
is  the  source  of  all  good  and  perfect  gifts.  There 
have  been  times  and  places  in  which  it  was  thought 
to  be  a  matter  for  the  special  providence  of  God 
whether  this  or  that  man  might  be  godly  or  not, 
ought  to  be  clean  or  not:  we  now  believe  boldly 
that  God's  will  is  goodness,  is  cleanliness,  for  all. 
Faith  in  divine  healing  as  revealed  in  the  Lord 


262     GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH    book  m 

jesus  cannot  for  any  length  of  time  rest  on  any 
narrower  foundation  than  this.  Until  we  class 
together  those  awful  realities,  sin,  disease,  and 
dirt,  and  realise  that  ill-health  of  any  sort  bears 
to  a  man's  body  the  same  relation  that  dirt  bears 
to  his  house  or  sin  to  his  soul,  faith  in  the  healing 
touch  of  Christ  will  still  tend  to  be  associated  with 
inadequate  theologies,  to  be  local  and  ephemeral, 
evinced  by  one  section  of  Christians  or  another, 
but  rejected  by  the  Church  at  large. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    NATURE    MARVELS 

While  belief  in  the  marvellous  cures  which  Jesus 
worked  upon  the  bodies  and  minds  of  men  has 
become  comparatively  easy  since  we  have  gained 
evidence  that  such  cures,  although  still  com- 
paratively rare,  are  not  out  of  the  course  of  nature, 
those  of  his  works  classed  as  "nature-miracles" 
are  still  quite  inexplicable  to  us. 

When  the  learning  of  men  is  applied  to 
documents  written  by  men  and  facts  of  human 
history,  there  comes  a  point  in  historic  and  literary 
criticism  when  all  that  need  be  known  in  order 
to  form  a  sound  judgment  is  known.  That  the 
Book  of  Daniel  is  not  history ;  that  the  writers  of 
the  New  Testament  made  mistakes  in  their  inter- 
pretation of  the  Old  Testament,  are  statements 
which  can  be  proved  by  ample  evidence.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  considering  those  Christian  marvels 
which  appear  to  contradict  the  laws  of  nature  we 
must  not  seek  an  assurance  inconsistent  with  the 
fact  that  nature  is  so  imperfectly  known  to  us  that 
we  can  never  be  sure  she  has  not  some  fresh 
surprise  in  store. 

263 


264    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON   EARTH 

Some  of  the  most  impossible  of  them  form 
part  of  the  history  of  Jesus  after  the  most  searching 
literary  tests  have  been  applied  to  the  record. 
They  stand  as  an  abiding  witness  that  we  are  only 
beginning  to  understand  what  he  gave  us  to  learn, 
that  the  full  meaning  of  his  earthly  ministry,  as  it 
relates  to  the  duties  and  privileges  of  the  kingdom 
on  earth,  is  for  future  generations — just  as  the 
chiefest  gains  of  science,  the  higher  social  life,  and 
the  fruition  of  all  our  progress,  is  for  future 
generations.  Yet  there  is  something  to  be  learnt 
from  them  now. 

Having  seen  that  two  out  of  the  three  classes 
of  our  Lord's  marvels  may  well  be  conceived  as 
within  the  province  of  nature,  we  have  a  strong 
presumption,  in  turning  to  the  nature-miracles, 
that  we  shall  find  the  same  true  of  them. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  certain  that  the  Gospels 
lay  no  claim  to  record  any  miracle  in  the  modern 
sense  —  by  which  term  we  mean,  any  action  of  God 
which,  even  if  the  same  earthly  conditions  were 
present,  need  not  occur  again.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era  men  had  not  tried  to  draw  a 
dividing  line  between  the  possible  and  impossible 
in  nature.  Cataclysms  which  belong  strictly  to 
the  domain  of  nature,  such  as  thunderbolts,  earth- 
quakes, and  other  prodigies,  were  called  marvels, 
in  common  with  minor  things  which  appeared  to 
contradict  natural  order.  The  wonderful  works 
which  Jesus  did  were  never  catalogued  as  super- 
natural by  the  mind  of  the  time,  because  nature 
herself  was  looked  upon  as  the  mother  of  marvels. 
God  and  nature  had  never  been  dissociated :  what 


chap,  ix     THE   NATURE    MARVELS  265 

God  did  nature  did;  what  nature  did  God  did; 
or  if  the  devil  was  supposed  to  be  the  agent,  there 
was  no  dissociation  of  his  works  from  those  of 
nature,  however  extraordinary  his  actions  might  be. 
When  science  had  her  first  beginnings  she  was 
bound  to  attempt  to  draw  a  line  between  the 
possible  and  impossible;  but  in  so  doing  she 
scarcely  took  time  to  classify  the  Gospel  marvels, 
until  a  frightened  and  self-defensive  Church  took 
upon  her  unbidden  a  quarrel  with  the  knowledge 
of  nature  that  comes  through  science,  and  insisted 
on  claiming  them  as  miracles  in  the  scientific 
sense. 

Secondly,  if  the  signs  we  are  discussing  were 
'  miraculous,'  we  are  bound  to  admit  that  they  fall 
far  short  of  what  men  might  naturally  expect,  and 
had  been  taught  to  expect,  of  the  unconditioned 
action  of  divine  power.  They  did  not  realise  the 
conception  which  man  in  the  ancient  world  had, 
which  man  still  popularly  has,  of  power  and  glory. 
The  psalms,  the  prophetic  writings  of  Israel,  are 
full  of  descriptions  of  more  glorious  acts  of  God's 
power;  and  in  the  poetry  of  polytheistic  religions 
works  of  greater  splendour  are  attributed  to  their 
deities  when  they  would  manifest  their  presence 
to  men.  The  pillar  of  fire  and  cloud  which 
went  before  Israel  in  the  wilderness;  the  thunders 
of  Jove;  the  flaming  arrows  of  Apollo,  and 
the  earthquakes  of  Poseidon,  "shaker  of  the  sea 
and  land"  —  all  these  suggest  divine  power  by 
their  magnificence.  Jewish  expectation  in  the 
time  of  Christ  was  moulded  by  such  passages  in 
prophetic  poetry  as  these:  —  "The  child  shall  die 


266    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

an  hundred  years  old."  "The  wolf  and  the  lamb 
shall  feed  together;  the  lion  shall  eat  straw  like 
the  bullock.  They  shall  not  hurt  nor  destroy." 
"The  Lord  will  come  with  fire  and  with  his 
chariots,  like  a  whirlwind."  "Then  shall  thy 
light  break  forth  as  the  morning,  and  thine  health 
shall  spring  forth  speedily,  and  thy  righteousness 
shall  go  before  thee,  and  the  glory  of  the  Lord  shall 
be  thy  rearward."  Or  they  had  God's  power 
suggested  by  figures  drawn  from  earthly  power 
and  victory,  such  as,  "I  will  gather  all  nations 
against  Jerusalem  to  battle  .  .  .  Then  shall  the 
Lord  go  forth  and  fight  against  those  nations." 
Or  they  had  the  mysteries  of  the  unseen  requisi- 
tioned in  all  those  abnormal  psychic  phenomena 
described  by  the  prophet  Joel  and  joyfully  claimed 
by  St.  Peter  as  fulfilled  in  the  days  of  Pentecost. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  idea  that  the  Jews 
expected  the  Messiah  to  be  an  earthly  king  with 
a  temporal  kingdom  and  were  disappointed;  but 
we  do  not  sufficiently  dwell  on  the  fact  that, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  expectations  of  glory 
raised  by  the  figures  in  which  the  prophets  foretold 
outward  manifestations  of  God's  spiritual  power, 
they  were  no  more  realised  in  the  marvels  of 
Jesus  than  was  the  expectation  of  temporal  power 
realised  in  the  kingdom  he  established.  We  all 
admit  that  there  was  an  obvious  reason  why  Jesus 
did  not  establish  an  empire  of  this  world :  if  our 
Lord  had  had  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  given 
to  him  by  some  power  external  to  those  kingdoms, 
either  God  or  devil,  he  would,  without  the  long 
process  of  natural  conversion,  have  had  no  hold 


chap,  ix     THE    NATURE    MARVELS  267 

upon  them,  unless  that  precious  requisite  of  salva- 
tion, their  power  of  choice,  had  been  taken  from 
them.  Further,  we  admit  that  to  perform  miracles 
which  coerced  man's  reason  would  have  been  to 
use  a  force  as  futile  as  that  of  armies  which  could 
but  coerce  his  outward  acts  of  worship.  But 
although  the  best  Christian  thought  disclaims  the 
idea  that  the  Gospel  miracles  were  designed  to 
coerce  man's  reason,  we  have  to  face  the  fact  that 
almost  all  notable  Christian  apologists  have  claimed 
that  they  are  miracles  in  the  sense  of  being  effects 
for  which  no  cause  can  be  assigned  except  the 
unconditioned  fiat  of  the  Almighty;  and  it  is 
further  claimed  that  miracles  in  this  sense  are  the 
only  proper  attendants  of  the  stupendous  fact  of 
the  Incarnation  —  necessary  signs  of  divine  glory 
and  power  when  God  descended  to  dwell  among 
men.  The  nature-miracles  are  the  last  stronghold 
of  those  who  maintain  this  view,  which  must  now 
be  briefly  considered.  Against  it  an  important 
difficulty  is  to  be  urged. 

If,  as  our  apologists  have  claimed,  the  miracles 
wrought  by  Jesus  were  not  conditioned  by  means, 
why  did  they  fall  so  far  short  of  what  they  might 
have  been  when  all  that  was  required  by  the 
psychic  law,  "My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world," 
was  that  they  should  not  coerce  man's  reason  ? 
We  seem  compelled  to  ask  why,  if  ten  lepers 
could  be  healed  at  a  word,  all  the  lepers  in 
Palestine  were  not  quietly  healed.  If  three 
disciples  might  see  the  transfigured  Christ,  why 
might  not  that  vision  have  been  vouchsafed  to  the 
imprisoned  Baptist,  or  the  perplexed  mother,  or 


268    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

the  doubting  Thomas  ?  If  wine  could  be  made 
to  flow  freely  at  one  wedding-feast,  why  not  at 
a  multitude  of  feasts  ?  If  a  weary  crowd  could 
be  fed  upon  a  mountain  side,  why  not  the  poor  of 
the  cities,  left  during  those  three  years  in  their 
habitual  condition  of  disease  and  semi-starvation  ? 
Such  benevolences  as  these  might  have  persuaded 
without  compulsion. 

There  are  only  two  possible  answers  to  the 
question,  why  the  marvellous  works  of  Jesus  fell 
so  far  short  of  what  every  one  must  expect  of  the 
Manifestation  of  divine  power.  One  —  that  there 
was  indeed  here  nothing  but  a  holy  man  about 
whose  history  grew  a  miraculous  legend  —  is  quite 
inadequate;  for  had  these  marvels  been  legendary, 
they  would  have  been  many  times  more  glorious, 
as  well  as  more  fantastic  and  paltry.  The  second 
answer  appears  to  be  the  only  one  that  satisfies 
reason;  it  is  that  they  were  as  strictly  conditioned 
by  the  natural  sequences  of  cause  and  effect  as  any 
action  of  our  own,  the  difference  being  that  they 
were  conditioned  by  sequences  of  which  we  have 
only  the  slightest  knowledge.  If  the  marvels 
wrought  by  Jesus  were  strictly  the  result  of  natural 
causes,  psychical  or  physical,  if  he  could  only  do 
what  he  did  by  taking  the  utmost  advantage  of 
the  psychic  and  physical  means  that  the  strength 
of  his  personality  put  within  his  control,  we  can 
well  understand  why  those  works  were  so  limited 
in  scope.  Thus,  in  the  strict  limitation  of  the 
range  and  outward  glory  of  the  wonders  worked 
by  Jesus  we  have  another  strong  presumption  that 
they  were  subject  to  conditions. 


chap,  ix     THE   NATURE    MARVELS  269 

Have  we,  then,  in  the  works  of  Jesus  nothing 
unique,  nothing  that  adequately  testifies  to  a  Pres- 
ence on  earth  that  compels  the  adoration  of  the 
pure  in  heart,  while  it  defies  estimation  by  any 
of  the  human  standards  by  which  men  had  before 
him  been  obliged  to  measure  the  divine  ? 

We  compare  our  Lord's  miracles  with  the 
natural  expectation  concerning  phenomena  that 
would  show  forth  divine  glory,  and  they  appear 
poor  and  meagre.  We  compare  them,  again,  with 
the  marvels  that  have  their  birth  in  local  fancies 
and  their  record  in  religious  fiction,  and  we  find 
in  them  a  dignity  that  in  this  comparison  is 
majestic,  a  tender  utility  and  grave  economy 
which  mark  them  as  belonging  to  a  higher  and 
purer  level  of  thought.  When  we  make  a  third 
comparison,  and  set  our  Lord's  power  as  displayed 
in  the  nature-miracles  beside  human  power  with 
which  we  are  familiar,  we  are  confounded  by  the 
contrast  of  man's  feebleness  in  the  midst  of  natural 
forces. 

Compare  the  genius  of  the  man  Napoleon. 
Perhaps  no  other  man  has  shown  such  extraordi- 
nary power  in  organising  rough  crowds  into  armies, 
in  compelling  the  wealth  and  the  ingenuity  of  the 
world  for  the  sustenance  and  equipment  of  those 
armies.  What  was  it  that  foiled  him  in  the  zenith 
of  his  power  ?  A  desert  place  and  a  hungry 
multitude !  In  our  late  war  in  South  Africa  the 
same  direful  circumstances  were  repeated  many 
a  time  on  a  smaller  scale;  they  come  home  to  us 
because  the  sufferers  were  those  of  our  own  house- 
hold.    Once,   upon  the  veldt,   a  little  company, 


270     GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH     book  m 

some  hundreds  of  men,  after  having  ridden  hard 
since  sunrise  in  pursuit  of  an  elusive  enemy,  came 
at  night  to  the  camping  place  where  they  were  to 
receive  the  first  meal  of  the  day.  Some  dry  food 
there  was  —  not  enough  to  go  round;  but  the 
scarcity  was  nothing  compared  with  the  lack  of 
water.  A  few  gallons  were  made  into  dirty  black 
tea  and  served  out  to  the  first  comers,  and  for 
the  rest  there  was  nothing  but  burning  thirst  and 
hunger  for  another  night  and  day.  More  than 
one  of  those  strong  men  turned  away  sobbing  with 
disappointment  when  they  found  they  could  not 
obtain  a  mouthful  of  tea.  This  is  what  the  wealth 
of  England  and  modern  military  science  could 
accomplish !  Our  compassion  becomes  almost 
fever  within  us  as  we  think  of  the  shame  and 
pain  of  such  suffering.  We  turn  to  an  incident 
in  the  life  of  Jesus  for  which  there  is  as  good 
historical  evidence  as  for  any  other,  and  watch 
with  what  incomparable  serenity  he  feeds  to 
fulness  a  weary  multitude  in  a  desert  place.  The 
beautiful  order  of  that  feast,  the  lavish  abundance, 
the  sober  thrift,  give  it  a  character  which  even 
now  refreshes  our  minds  and  bodies  when  we  think 
of  it.  Among  all  that  mixed  crowd  which  sat 
upon  the  grassy  slope  in  expectant  companies  none 
lacked  the  appetite  of  health;  it  was  the  health- 
giver  who  gave  them  food.  How  powerless  is 
the  modern  physician  to  heal  more  than  a  few  of 
those  who  come  to  him;  Jesus  had  healed  all  who 
came  —  all !  * 

It  is  needless  to  repeat  that  the  means  Jesus 

1  St.  Luke  ix.  11-12;  St.  Matt.  xiv.  14-15. 


chap,  ix     THE   NATURE    MARVELS  271 

employed  in  the  nature-miracles  are  beyond  our 
knowledge  or  imagination,  and,  unlike  the  miracles 
of  healing,  they  are  more  marvellous  to-day  to  us, 
to  whom  the  greater  works  of  science  are  familiar, 
than  they  were  to  the  simple  peasantry  before 
whom  they  took  place.  Are  they  incredible  ? 
Every  candid  mind,  even  the  most  sceptical,  must 
reply  that  they  are  not  incredible,  although  they 
are  as  yet  inexplicable.  Nothing  is  incredible, 
even  though  inexplicable,  as  long  as  our  know- 
ledge about  it  is  incomplete  enough  to  leave  room 
for  the  discovery  of  its  place  in  some  sequence  of 
cause  and  effect  now  unknown.  As  an  illustration 
of  a  marvel  to  be  credited  only  because  we  believe 
it  may  be  explicable  we  quote  an  article  by  M. 
Gustave  le  Bon  on  the  energy  generated  by  the 
activity  of  radium :  — 

"Parmi  les  assertions  qui  ont  ete  formulees 
dans  la  discussion  sur  le  radium  auquel  il  a  ete  fait 
allusion  se  trouve  la  suivante  enoncee  par  M. 
Soddy;  'L'emission  de  l'energie  du  radium  reste 
un  mystere.' 

"Ce  mystere  est  evident  avec  les  idees  anciennes, 
mais  si  on  admet  la  theorie  de  l'energie  intra- 
atomique  que  je  defends  depuis  si  longtemps, 
l'explication  du  mystere  est  en  verite  tres  simple. 
Tous  les  corps,  le  radium  comme  les  autres, 
representent  un  immense  reservoir  d'energie  con- 
centree  sous  un  faible  volume  a  l'epoque  de  leur 
formation.  Seule  cette  energie  peut  expliquer  la 
vitesse  d'emission  des  particules  radio-actives. 

"  Et  si  on  demande  comment  une  quantite  tres 
grande  d'energie  peut  etre  condensee  sous  un  si 


272     GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH     book  m 

faible  volume,  on  repondra  que  Implication  est 
tres  simple  encore.  II  suffit  d'admettre  que  les 
elements  des  atomes  sont  animes  d'un  mouvement 
de  rotation  ayant  la  rapidite  de  remission  des 
rayons  cathodiques,  c'est-a-dire,  une  vitesse 
moyenne  egale  au  tiers  de  celle  de  la  lumiere. 
J'ai  montre  ailleurs  qu'on  pourrait  imaginer  une 
petite  machine  pouvant  etre  enfermee  dans  le 
chaton  d'une  bague,  et  composee  uniquement 
d'une  sphere  de  la  grosseur  d'une  tete  d'epingle 
tournant  sur  elle-meme  dans  le  vide  avec  la  vitesse 
indiquee  plus  haut.  Par  le  seul  fait  de  sa  rotation, 
son  energie  cinetique  serait  de  203,873  millions 
de  kilogrammetres,  soit  le  travail  fourniraient  en 
une  heure  15 10  locomotives  d'une  puissance 
moyenne  de  500  chevaux."  1 

While  science  is  able  in  these  last  days  to 
soberly  suggest  potentialities  in  'dead  matter' 
which  stagger  our  powers  of  comprehension  and 
belief,  which  of  us  is  prepared  to  affirm  of  any  of 
the  marvels  of  Jesus  that  in  regard  to  them  there 
is  no  room  left  for  the  discovery  of  natural  powers 
and  sequences  which  may  account  for  them  —  that, 
in  fact,  we  know  all  there  is  to  know  about  them  ? 
It  may  be  that  future  generations  will  find  the 
nature-miracles  so  far  explicable  as  this  generation 
begins  to  find  the  miracles  of  healing.  Yet  in 
these  miracles  of  Jesus,  as  they  stand  before  us 
to-day,  there  is  a  quality  of  exquisite  friendliness 
with  nature,  human  and  physical,  which  attracts 
us  as  much  as  their  inexplicable  mystery  repels. 
We  are  enlightened  by  them,  not  as  by  the  clear 

1  The  Athencsum,  Nov.  17,  1906. 


chap,  ix     THE   NATURE   MARVELS  273 

shining  of  a  heavenly  light,  but  as  by  the  glare  of 
sunshine  breaking  through  a  mist  —  a  glare  which 
dazzles  while  it  leaves  us  bewildered  in  the  cloud. 
At  present  all  we  can  do  with  these  nature-miracles 
is  to  concern  ourselves  with  what  is  of  supreme 
importance  to  us  —  the  part  they  take  in  the  reve- 
lation Jesus  gave  through  all  his  signs  of  God's 
will  for  man,  and  the  human  conditions  in  which 
that  will  can  work. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    CONDITIONS    OF    PHYSICAL    POWER 

There  is  nothing  in  the  gospel  narrative  that 
seems  to  set  the  ideal  of  the  kingdom  more  apart 
from  the  natural  life,  nothing  that  clashes  more 
rudely  with  the  common  sense  of  the  world,  than 
the  absolute  promises  Jesus  gave  that  God  would 
provide  for  the  personal  needs,  material  as  well  as 
spiritual,  of  the  true  child  of  the  kingdom;  and 
the  nature-miracles  were  the  most  emphatic  part  of 
that  body  of  teaching  by  which  Jesus  enforced  the 
duty  of  a  disinterested  life.  When  we  examine 
the  conditions  common  to  them  all,  we  may  find 
that  they  also  teach  that  God's  providence  in  these 
matters  can  only  operate  fully  when  the  disinter- 
ested life  of  faith  becomes  corporate. 

The  common  characteristic  of  these  nature- 
miracles  is  that  they  were  accomplished  only  in 
those  companies,  small  or  great,  which  were  for 
the  time  presumably  of  one  heart  and  way  of 
thought,  strongly  moved  by  some  common  innocent 
desire.  In  the  case  of  the  desert  feast  a  multitude 
who,  disregarding  all  other  calls,  had  hung  for  days 
upon  the  words  of  Jesus,  had  presumably  been 

274 


chap.  x  PHYSICAL    POWER  275 

welded  for  the  time  into  a  psychic  unit.  Such  as 
were  not  enthralled  by  his  voice  must  have  turned 
away  before.  We  are  told  that  love  for  his 
teaching  had  drawn  them  on  until  bodily  hunger 
made  the  danger  of  fainting  imminent.  From 
every  heart,  as  from  one  heart,  would  arise  un- 
spoken blessings  on  him  for  the  joy  of  his  teaching, 
and  an  unconscious  cry  for  bread.  Then  came 
the  lavish  multiplication  of  bread  and  fish.  We 
must  be  thankful  that  we  are  told  clearly  about 
the  multiplication  of  those  few  small  fishes.  The 
detail  for  most  minds  excludes  those  transcendental 
explanations  which  usually  belittle  what  they  try 
to  glorify.  Here,  in  the  solitude  of  the  hills,  as 
the  thoughts  of  hundreds  of  men  bless  God  for 
religious  enlightenment,  their  bodies  cry  out  for 
common  food,  and  the  Christ,  standing  in  the 
midst,  produces  it  abundantly,  by  means  to  us  in- 
visible, inexplicable,  and  experimentally  incredible. 
Take  as  another  example  the  wedding-feast. 
We  know  that  it  was  the  custom  to  shut  the  door 
when  the  bidden  guests  had  entered.  Here,  then, 
was  another  company  apart  for  the  time,  their 
hearts  filled  with  the  simple  emotions  which  the 
occasion  called  forth.  "Joy  is  the  grace  we  sing 
to  God,"  and  there  is  no  occasion  that  calls  forth 
the  joy  of  brotherhood  more  surely  than  such  a 
festival.  Especially  in  simple  peasant  life  is  the 
wedding-feast  an  hour  of  heightened  emotion  and 
enjoyment.  Not  merely  the  desire  of  quenching 
thirst  or  satisfying  the  pleasures  of  the  palate  would 
make  such  a  company  feel  solicitous  when  there 
was  a  troubled  halt  among  those  that  served;   the 


276    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH    book  m 

pain  of  the  host,  of  the  bridegroom  and  the  friend 
of  the  bridegroom,  would  come  before  their  minds. 
Poverty  never  really  weeps  till  it  is  checked  in  an 
act  of  generosity,  never  really  suffers  shame  except 
when  ashamed  to  be  unable  to  give.  In  the  midst 
of  the  common  desire  evoked  by  sympathy  with 
a  generous  poverty,  the  Christ  turned  water  into 
wine. 

Again,  let  us  consider  the  stilling  of  the  storm,  or 
that  scene  upon  the  sea  in  the  fourth  watch  of  the 
night  when  Jesus  came  to  the  little  loyal  band  of 
disciples  toiling  in  rowing,  distressed  by  the  waves 
and  a  contrary  wind.  Here  again  was  the  common 
isolation,  and  one  strong,  simple  desire  for  help 
against  the  elements;  the  means  by  which  he 
commanded  the  elements,  or  the  means  of  his 
coming  over  the  sea,  are  beyond  our  ken.  We 
have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  had  there  been  no 
isolation  of  storm  and  night,  had  the  lake  been 
studded  with  boats  of  fishermen  who  had  no 
common  interest,  no  conscious  desire  for  his  help 
or  his  presence,  he  could  have  done  these  things; 
just  as  we  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  could 
have  given  wine  to  the  thirsty  poor  of  the  indis- 
criminate streets,  or  bread  to  any  promiscuous 
crowd  of  beggars,  or  could,  for  a  sign  to  the  carping 
and  faithless  theologians  who  asked  for  one,  have 
cast  himself  down  from  a  pinnacle  of  the  temple 
without  suffering  bodily  harm.  These  feats  may 
have  been  possible  to  his  earthly  conditions,  but 
there  is  much  in  the  Gospel  record  against  the 
presumption. 

In  one  case,  when  he  brought  back  the  dead  to 


chap.x  PHYSICAL    POWER 


277 


life,  he  shut  out  from  the  room  all  except  five 
souls,  who  must  have  been  shaken  with  grief  or 
intense  sympathy;  in  another  he  performed  the 
same  marvel  in  the  midst  of  "much  people  of  the 
city"  who,  according  to  the  narrative,  had  come 
out  with  the  mother,  moved,  as  the  emphasis  on  the 
size  of  the  procession  suggests,  by  the  more  than 
common  pathos  of  her  bereavement.  In  the  raising 
of  Lazarus,  again,  it  is  specially  recorded  that  Jesus 
waited  upon  the  road  until  both  sisters,  and  all 
those  who  were  weeping  with  them,  came  out  to 
him.  These  could  have  been  no  hired  mourners, 
for,  we  are  told,  their  grief  so  moved  our  Lord 
that  he  wept  with  them.  Now,  it  was  not  until 
this  multitude  went  with  him  to  the  tomb  and 
stood  around  him,  that  he  called  Lazarus  forth. 
We  are  told  that  some  of  the  mourners  did  not 
believe  on  Jesus,  although  many  of  them  did;  but 
it  would  appear  from  the  narrative  that,  as  in  the 
other  cases,  it  was  not  a  common  belief  in  him, 
but  absorption  in  some  emotion  which  they  had 
in  common  with  him,  that  made  his  acts  possible; 
in  this  case  there  seems  no  doubt  that  the  mourning 
multitude  about  him  were  united  in  a  genuine 
grief — the  man  Lazarus  was  evidently  bound  to 
a  large  number  of  his  neighbours  by  ties  of  unusual 
affection.  These  circumstances  were  not  enough 
without  the  faith  Jesus  exercised  in  the  invariable 
procession  of  power  from  God,  but  they  seem  to 
have  been  required. 

If  we  turn  to  our  Lord's  promises  concerning 
the  marvels  that  God  will  do  through  men  in 
answer  to  prayer,  we  find  that  they  postulate  the 


278     GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH 


BOOK    III 


same  conditions,  and  his  words  probably  have 
more  strict  application  to  the  conditions  required 
for  his  own  miracles  than  we  have  been  accustomed 
to  perceive.  The  individual  is  to  isolate  himself 
for  the  hour,  or  to  be  gathered  with  those  who 
seek  the  same  end  by  the  same  faith;  the  eye  is  to 
be  single,  for  a  double  aim  is  fatal;  the  thoughts 
are  not  to  be  taken  up  with  thrifty  foresight,  nor 
do  the  bodily  needs  even  require  expression,  or 
more  than  the  merest  expression,  for  the  mere  need 
goes  to  God's  heart  as  a  prayer;  the  conscious 
aim  of  him  who  prays  is  to  be  the  "kingdom,"  i.e., 
the  corporate  well-being  and  well-doing.  Above 
all,  in  prayer,  if  it  is  to  be  true  prayer,  there  must 
be  no  sense  of  separation  from  other  men;  if 
there  is  so  much  as  a  critical  judgment,  let  alone  a 
wrong,  separating  brother  from  brother,  neighbour 
from  neighbour,  the  breach  of  unity  is  first  to  be 
healed :  no  offence  is  to  be  given  to,  or  taken  from, 
the  world,  so  that  even  the  external  antagonism  of 
all  evil  may  be  minimised  in  fact  and  obliterated 
in  thought.  This  is  the  epitome  of  the  require- 
ments demanded  in  the  synoptic  Gospels  of  him 
who  would  seek  from  God  the  more  abundant  life 
of  the  kingdom  whose  first  law  and  chief  traffic  is 
prayer.  In  St.  John's  Gospel  the  two  conditions 
of  prayer  chiefly  insisted  on  are,  friendship  with 
and  invocation  of  the  risen  Christ,  and  love  for 
and  communion  with  men,  both  essential  to  a 
triumphant  result.  Here,  as  always,  we  have  the 
idea  of  a  psychic  coalition,  produced  by  common 
intense  desire  and  the  inspiration  of  the  spirit  of 
the  Master.     That  inspiration  creates  an  assured 


chap,  x  PHYSICAL    POWER  279 

expectation  that  the  means  will  accomplish  the  end 
because  in  harmony  with  the  desire  of  God  to  give 
what  is  asked.  This  assurance  of  the  marvellous 
result  is  put  forth  as  sufficient  motive  to  make 
obedience  to  the  law  of  love  possible. 

To  sum  up.  If  the  marvels  of  Jesus  required  as 
their  condition  a  coalition  of  hearts  attuned  in  some 
sort  with  the  heart  of  God  in  that  they  blessed  what 
he  blessed,  and  mourned  what  excited  his  sorrow, 
and  were  in  no  way  perturbed  by  sense  of  earthly  or 
spiritual  antagonism;  if  we  also  allow  that  the  pre- 
cepts and  promises  of  the  gospel  point  to  some  divine 
necessity  for  the  same  human  conditions  in  order 
that  men  of  any  age  may  duly  experience  God's 
inspiration  and  providence,  we  are  faced  with  this 
conclusion  at  least,  that  if  we  decide  apart  from 
these  considerations  how  far  it  may,  or  may  not, 
be  wise  or  possible  to  obey  the  laws  laid  down  for 
the  members  of  this  corporate  commonwealth,  we 
cannot  blame  the  system  of  Jesus  if  our  Christianity 
appears  to  fail.  If  one  man  alone  for  an  hour  in 
his  closet  has  by  prayer  more  strength  to  help  God 
to  bless  the  world  than  the  same  man  in  an  un- 
friendly crowd;  if  in  his  closet  he  has  strength 
that  is  of  use  to  God  only  in  so  far  as  he  is  at  ease 
in  every  relationship  and  in  every  respect  except 
the  need  of  the  hour;  if  his  strength,  even  in 
solitude,  is  multiplied  by  the  consciousness  of  being 
upborne  by  the  mind  of  others;  if  two  or  three 
men  assembled  in  such  communion  of  purpose 
can  intensify  the  power  of  each  to  draw  on  the 
divine  help  in  earthly  things;  if  by  the  segregation 
of  such  smaller  associations  of  minds  in  a  more 


28o     GOD'S  CITADEL  ON  EARTH     book  hi 

widespread  unity  of  spirit  and  aim  whose  reality 
and  power  does  not  depend  on  outward  and  visible 
connection,  though  it  may  be  expressed  and 
emphasised  by  it,  God  can  actually  do  for  earth 
what  he  does  for  heaven,  —  if  all  this  be  indeed 
true,  then  the  unreserved  and  universal  practice 
of  the  law  of  love  is  not  only  obligatory,  —  the 
exclusive  obligation,  —  but  as  the  obligation  is 
more  recognised  will  become  increasingly  possible. 
Having  seen  that  even  Jesus  appeared  to  require 
a  certain  psychic  atmosphere  in  order  to  help  the 
needy  by  his  own  marvellous  hold  upon  the  eternal 
attitude  of  giving  in  God,  and  that  this  atmosphere 
appears  to  be  such  that  it  would  be  created  in  the 
Church  if  the  doctrines  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  were  looked  upon  as  practical,  let  us  again 
consider  why  it  is  that  we  have  believed  these 
precepts  unpractical.  We  shall  find  ourselves  in 
the  never-failing  circle  of  reciprocal  cause  and 
effect:  we  do  not  receive  because  we  have  not 
believed;  we  cannot  believe  because  we  have  no 
experience  of  receiving.  We  suppose  the  com- 
mands of  Jesus  to  be  beyond  our  obedience 
because  we  think  his  gifts  beyond  our  reach. 
There  must  be  faith  in  God's  will  to  provide  for 
man's  earthly  needs  in  order  to  make  it  possible 
for  prudent  men  to  be  disinterested.  It  is  right 
that  a  man  should  count  the  cost  and  consider  if 
he  is  able  to  meet  the  enemy;  and  it  is  the 
revelation  of  God's  will  which  Jesus  gives  in  his 
marvellous  works  which  shows  that  we  have  enough 
money  to  build  the  tower,  that  we  have  sufficient 
strength  to  meet  the  enemy.     The   religion  that 


chap,  x  PHYSICAL    POWER  281 

would  save  the  world  must  solve  the  great  practical 
question,  how  to  develop  the  resources  of  humanity 
to  the  utmost  without  those  hatreds  between  man 
and  man,  that  desire  for  material  gain,  which  in 
the  struggle  of  evolution  have  been  chief  factors 
of  human  development.  Jesus  recognised  the 
command  against  covetousness  as  the  keystone 
without  which  the  moral  arch  must  fall;  he  also 
saw  that  there  was  a  higher  law,  working  even  on 
earth,  accord  with  which  made  it  possible  to  dis- 
pense with  covetousness.  In  the  old  Eden  story 
the  curse  upon  man  is  not  that  he  must  work,  — 
Adam  dressed  and  kept  the  fields  of  paradise,  — 
but  that  he  must  exhaust  his  powers  in  working 
for  his  own  living.  Jesus  offered  salvation  from 
this  curse.  "Earthly  things  shall  be  given  you" 
is  the  promise  that  illuminates  all  his  commands  to 
labour  for  the  meat  that  endureth. 

We  need  very  seriously  to  consider  what  this 
doctrine  of  Jesus  does  actually  mean  in  practical  life. 
Are  we  to  consider  it  as  an  exaggerated  figure 
standing  for  a  meagre  reality,  the  offer  of  only  the 
uncertain  alms  of  such  good  luck  as  all  may  ex- 
perience ?  Or  is  it  a  material  figure  of  spiritual 
help  only  by  which  the  common  circumstances  of 
life  may  be  bent  to  the  Christian's  purpose  ?  Does 
it,  in  fact,  mean  only  what  would  be  consonant  with 
any  reasonable  forecast  of  the  future  which  we 
could  base  on  our  experience  of  the  past  ?  Or  does 
it  point  to  a  far  better  state  of  things  than  we  can 
foresee  —  a  state  in  which  a  Church  truly  meek 
will  inherit  the  earth,  and  a  Church  really  poor  in 
spirit  will  establish  thereon  a  heavenly  civilisation  ? 


:8z    GOD'S   CITADEL   ON   EARTH    book 


hi 


If  we  think  the  latter  view  more  worthy  of  the 
Christian  faith,  are  we  to  expect  the  established 
processes  of  nature  to  be  violated  that  an  unnatural 
end  may  be  accomplished  ?  or  is  it  more  reasonable 
to  assume  that  the  unity  of  nature  and  the  common 
sense  of  man  may  prove  to  be  in  harmony  with  an 
order  of  things  even  yet  a  little  beyond  our  pre- 
vision ?  The  question  really  resolves  itself  into 
this,  Is  it  evidence  of  a  sound  mind  to  repeat  the 
Christian  creeds  and  believe  that  Jesus,  although 
"very  God  of  very  God,"  spoke  at  times  as  an 
unpractical  visionary;  that  he  who  said,  "Let  your 
communication  be  yea  and  nay,  for  whatsoever  is 
more  than  these  is  of  the  evil,"  launched  into  the 
world  wild  promises  which  cannot  in  the  nature  of 
things  be  fulfilled  ?  Or  is  it  more  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  he  whom  we  worship  may  have  had 
more  common  sense  than  we  have  yet  acquired  ? 
He  said,  "Resist  not  evil.  Give  to  him  that 
asketh.  If  men  take  by  force  give  them  more 
than  they  take.  Love  those  who  ill-use  you. 
Thus  and  thus  only  shall  ye  become  the  children 
of  the  highest.  Take  no  thought  for  the  needs 
of  your  bodily  life.  God  provides.  Make  the 
interests  of  the  kingdom  your  supreme  end.  Thus 
and  thus  only  shall  you  attain  to  communion  with 
God." 

The  Christianity  of  Christ  and  that  of 
Christendom  are  in  these  respects  divergent.  The 
sword  and  the  muckrake  are  our  earthly  means  of 
existence.  The  Church  has  never  laid  down 
either,  nor  insisted  on  universal  friendship  as  the 
only    mode  of   Christian    life.      We    continue    to 


chap,  x  PHYSICAL    POWER  283 

wield  the  sword  because  the  command  to  love 
universally  appears  to  us  foolish.  We  solemnly  give 
this  command  verbal  deference;  we  repudiate  it  in 
the  name  of  patriotism,  in  the  name  of  principle, 
religious  and  political,  in  the  name  of  common 
sense,  in  the  name  of  the  Church,  and  even  in  the 
name  of  Christ.  Nor  has  the  Church  commended 
abstinence  from  the  acquisitive  temper;  she  has 
contented  herself  with  licensing  it.  She  has  cried 
that  a  man  does  well  if,  for  his  nation,  his  church, 
his  order,  his  family,  he  covet  earnestly  material 
gain;  and  to  this  proclamation  only  a  few  con- 
ditions concerning  the  laws  of  property  and  the 
giving  of  alms  are  subjoined.  The  Church  is 
confident  in  contradicting  her  Lord  because  she 
has  never  caught  a  glimpse  of  that  inner  harmony 
between  faith  and  nature  which  works  to  save 
the  disinterested  man  from  a  pauper's  grave. 
She  has  never  held  up  the  birds  and  the  flowers  as 
examples  for  the  practical,  everyday  life;  she  has 
diligently  commended  the  principle  of  storehouses 
and  barns,  and  the  practice  of  pulling  them  down 
and  building  greater. 

The  reason  of  all  this  is  that,  in  defiance  of  the 
gospel,  the  Church  has  never  conceived  of  God  as 
commonly  moving  in  man's  material  affairs  except 
as  the  cause  of  inexplicable  disaster  or  merited 
punishment.  "Thy  will  be  done"  has  been  a 
wail,  instead  of  a  shout  of  joyful  expectation. 
God  has  deserved  better  of  us  in  nature,  and  a 
thousand  times  better  in  the  revelation  of  Christ; 
and  yet  our  saddest  hymns,  our  most  melancholy 
moods,  have  for  their  refrain  the  sentiment,  "God's 


284    GOD'S   CITADEL  ON  EARTH 

will  be  done";  and  we  regard  "resignation"  to 
woe  as  the  highest  attainment  of  the  soul  before 
God.  This  is  true  of  the  Church  in  the  land  of 
Luther,  the  nation  of  Knox,  the  city  of  Calvin, 
the  continent  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  as  it  is 
in  those  regions  to  which  the  Greek,  Roman, 
or  Anglican  Churches  desire  to  give  exclusive 
light.  In  none  of  these  branches  of  the  Church  does 
the  acceptance  of  God's  will  suggest  any  temporal 
advantage;  the  sentiment  that  "the  visitation  of 
God"  is  direful  is  writ  large,  not  only  in  the 
liturgies,  but  in  the  legal  forms,  of  Christendom. 
Although  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  laws 
that  govern  the  higher  social  and  civil  life  has 
surely  found  some  response  in  every  saintly  heart, 
the  expression  of  such  faith  is  vague  and  un- 
practical compared  with  the  large  body  of  instruc- 
tion which  insists  that  it  is  only  after  every  decent 
form  of  money-grubbing  has  been  resorted  to 
that  the  Christian  may  carelessly  throw  himself  on 
God's  mercy  for  food  and  raiment;  and  that,  while 
we  thank  God  for  material  goods,  we  are  con- 
vinced that  they  come  from  him  in  exact  return 
for  so  much  toil  and  cleverness  expended  in  their 
acquisition  and  for  the  exercise  of  that  thrift 
which  acts  as  a  wholesome  moderator  of  com- 
passion. Thus  the  divided  aim  which  Jesus 
considered  fatal  to  spiritual  life  is  with  us  the 
first  necessity  of  Christian  respectability,  because 
none  of  the  works  which  he  performed,  none  of 
the  promises  which  he  gave  to  save  us  from  it,  have 
obtained  credence. 

Failing  completely,  as  we  do,  to  see  how  the 


chap,  x  PHYSICAL    POWER  285 

law  of  love  and  of  carelessness  can  be  made 
practical,  we  consistently  laud  those  who  give  the 
greater  emphasis  of  life's  energy  to  the  skilful 
handling  of  the  sword  and  the  muckrake,  if  only 
they  also  give  some  imaginative  attention  to  the 
angelic  crown.  Indeed,  the  muckrake  and  the 
beggar's  wallet  are  our  emblems  of  civic  and 
religious  duty;  to  use  the  one  is  the  common 
virtue,  to  carry  the  other  is  the  counsel  of  perfec- 
tion. In  other  words,  a  man  must  either  make 
more  money  than  he  needs,  or,  giving  himself  to 
public  or  religious  service,  take  their  surplus  from 
those  who  make  it.  We  insist  upon  taking  thought 
for  the  morrow  because  we  do  not  believe  that 
God  has  any  resources  that  we  have  left  untried. 
We  are  sure  that  the  purpose  of  personal  gain 
is  needed  to  develop  character  and  enterprise; 
we  are  sure,  not  only  that  "he  that  careth  not 
for  his  own  is  worse  than  an  infidel,"  but  that 
no  degree  of  affiance  in  God  can  make  the 
beatitudes  true  in  commercial  or  military  or 
national  affairs.  The  aphorisms  of  Christ  only 
apply,  we  are  convinced,  to  the  hidden  and 
mysterious  life  of  the  spirit  which  is  to  be  lived 
apart  in  the  soul.  Should  this  inner  life  wax  so 
strong  as  to  burst  forth  into  practice,  then  error, 
confusion,  the  pauperism  of  the  individual,  and  the 
fall  of  empire,  would  result.  We  see  all  too 
clearly  that  if  the  Jewish  state  of  the  Christian 
era  had  loyally  accepted  Jesus  as  its  ruler,  he 
could  not  possibly  have  administered  its  foreign 
policy  according  to  his  altruistic  principles  unless 
he  had  also  been  willing  to  make  the  stones  bread 


286   GOD'S   CITADEL   ON   EARTH 

and  to  call  for  "more  than  twelve  legions  of 
angels"  for  national  defence.  In  domestic  affairs 
we  are  all  assured  that  no  adequate  meal  would 
have  been  spread  for  Jesus  and  his  disciples  if 
Martha,  like  Mary,  had  chosen  the  better  part; 
while  there  is  nothing  more  self-evident  to  the 
students  of  social  order  than  that  if  the  young 
ruler  had  distributed  his  property  among  the  poor 
he  would  have  done  more  harm  than  good. 

These  reasonable  beliefs  underlie  the  whole 
civilisation  of  Christendom.  Their  influence  is 
perhaps  most  clearly  exemplified  in  the  latest 
developments,  commercial  and  political,  of  our 
youngest  nations,  where  unbridled  covetousness  in 
the  plutocracy  and  violence  and  tyranny  in  trade 
organisations  are  reaching  their  culmination.  Yet 
these  are  only  the  natural  flower  of  roots  laid  deep 
in  the  earlier  ages  when  the  most  respected  saints 
urged  the  Church  on  to  temporal  power,  and 
soldiers  set  out  uncondemned  to  advance  the 
dominion  of  the  Cross  by  slaying  the  Saracen  or 
the  Christian  heretic.  These  extreme  examples 
of  the  attempt  to  combine  the  principles  of  the 
world  with  life  in  the  kingdom  differ  from  others 
only  in  degree;  the  energy  of  Christian  life  is 
yielded  to  fighting  and  getting  and  holding  for  one 
purpose  or  another.  Our  Lord,  who  condemned 
the  standards  of  Jewish  religion  while  teaching 
that  from  its  ideal  the  salvation  of  the  world  must 
come,  must  condemn  the  militant  and  selfish 
standards  of  Christendom,  even  though  it  is  still 
the  custodian  of  his  salvation. 

We    thus    return    perforce    to    the    point    with 


PHYSICAL   POWER  287 

which  this  book  began  —  that  the  church  or  the 
individual  is  not  to  blame  because  it  or  he  cannot 
see  how  a  kingdom  with  Jesus  for  its  king,  and 
his  principles  as  its  laws,  could  exist  upon  earth. 
It  is  not  our  part  to  see,  but  to  believe  and  to  do; 
and  to  those  who  are  unwilling  to  venture  this, 
Jesus  holds  out  no  other  hope  of  illumination. 
We  must  still  hold  in  mind  —  what  examination  of 
the  Gospels  makes  clear  —  that  every  new  venture 
of  individual  faith  in  the  Christ-life  will  end  in 
some  apparent  failure  or  martyrdom  till  the 
corporate  faith  of  the  community  makes  the  higher 
success   possible. 


BOOK    IV 
HIS   WAYS    AND    OUR   WAYS 


289 


CHAPTER  I 

FASTING   AND   TEMPTATION 

Everywhere  in  the  records  of  the  nations  we 
find  historic  proof  of  the  widespread  hope  in  a 
time  when  wrong  will  cease,  when  the  mad  will 
be  sane,  disease  will  be  abolished,  and  peace  and 
plenty  will  reign  everywhere  on  earth.  The  gifts 
of  righteousness  —  amity,  prosperity,  health,  and 
self-control  —  are  the  simplest  tests  of  divine  good- 
will. The  most  prolonged  and  earnest  reasoning 
of  the  religious  schools,  which  have  taught  that  God 
desires  to  wean  men  from  the  world  rather  than 
to  give  earthly  with  spiritual  blessing,  can  hardly 
reason  away  the  expectation ;  and  the  belief  that 
such  earthly  gifts  must  accompany  divine  power 
springs  unbidden  in  the  heart  of  the  simple.  The 
prayer  for  a  deliverer  who  should  bring  about 
such  conditions  of  life  seems  to  have  been  the 
prayer  of  the  men  of  every  nation  as  soon  as  they 
were  able  to  give  their  deepest  hope  any  corporate 
expression.  The  effort  to  express  this  prayer  is 
to  be  found  in  the  magical  rites  of  primitive 
religions.  It  is  painted  in  the  gorgeous  pageant 
of  the  myths  of  Egypt,  Greece,  India,  and  Persia; 

291 


2Q2    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book 


IV 


it  is  woven  into  heroic  legends  which  lie  at  the 
beginning  of  each  national  history;  it  is  the 
unconquerable  theme  of  triumphant  prophecy. 
There  is  a  pre-Christian  legend  that  when  the 
Buddha  was  born  to  bring  the  light  of  truth,  the 
blind  saw,  the  lame  walked,  the  sick  were  raised 
up,  the  hungry  were  fed,  and  a  universal  peace 
reigned.  This  only  expresses  in  more  detail  than 
we  find  in  other  nations  a  universal  and  deep-seated 
optimism  which  included  both  earth  and  heaven, 
spirit  and  matter,  in  its  hope.  If  this  deep-seated 
sentiment  is  of  God  he  who  would  be  the  Saviour 
of  the  world  must  meet  and  complete  it. 

Side  by  side  with  this  existed  another  hope,  not 
less  universal,  not  less  profound,  and  in  outward 
semblance  more  high  and  glorious  —  the  hope  of 
attaining  heaven  by  giving  up  earth,  of  exalting 
spirit  at  the  expense  of  matter.  The  universal 
symbol  of  this  hope  was  the  practice  of  fasting  for 
some  religious  end.  This  widespread  practice 
affords  historic  proof  of  the  existence  of  the 
ascetic  ideal  in  all  nations.  The  ancient  Hindoos 
and  Buddhists,  Egyptians  and  Assyrians,  Babylo- 
nians, Persians  and  Jews,  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
held  their  public  fasts,  and  in  so  far  as  they  fasted 
acknowledged  asceticism  to  be  an  aid  to  the 
religious  life.  If  this  hope  of  reaching  heaven  by 
spurning  earth  was  of  God,  he  who  would  be  the 
Saviour  of  the  world  must  conform  to  the  practice 
which  was  its  universal  symbol,  and  in  his  hours 
of  physical  exhaustion  see  God  most  clearly  and 
reveal  him  most  fully. 

These  two  hopes   are  not  in  reality  consistent 


chap,  i    FASTING   AND   TEMPTATION    293 

with  one  another,  although  they  are  seen  side  by 
side  in  the  same  religions,  the  same  literatures, 
and  are  inextricably  confused  in  the  minds  of 
many.  There  is  a  deep,  underlying  opposition 
between  them.  They  have  a  common  base  in  the 
conviction  of  man's  sin  and  his  need  of  reforma- 
tion, and  their  common  end  is  man's  perfection 
and  God's  glory;  but  they  hold  opposing  con- 
ceptions of  perfection  and  of  God. 

Between  these  two  hopes,  as  they  struggle 
together  in  the  heart  of  a  nation  or  the  heart  of 
a  man,  there  is  always  a  profound  questioning. 
The  one  asks  whether  it  is  possible  to  find  the 
Creator  except  in  his  creation,  whether  it  is 
possible  to  be  in  close  communion  with  God 
without  being  in  close  communion  with  man; 
whether,  indeed,  man  has  any  right  to  suppose 
that  a  God  whom  he  conceives  as  so  far  transcend- 
ing his  creation  as  to  be  indifferent  to  any  of  its 
interests,  and  satisfied  with  the  imperfection  of 
any  aspect  of  his  creatures,  is  real  and  not  a  mere 
figment  of  human  egotism.  The  other  asks 
whether  the  infinite  God  can  be  apprehended 
through  those  phenomena  which  are  conveyed  to 
us  only  by  the  medium  of  our  fallible  and  tran- 
sitory senses;  whether  it  is  not  necessary  to 
diminish  the  power  of  the  senses  in  order  to  be 
able  to  ignore  the  things  of  sense,  and  thus  lessen 
their  hold  upon  the  mind  so  that  it  may  attain 
to  God. 

That  Jesus,  as  he  grew  in  wisdom,  pondered 
this  great  problem  of  religious  hope,  and  faced  it 
fully   in   the    silence   of  thirty   years,   we    cannot 


294    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  rv 

doubt.  Not  only  was  the  law  in  a  measure  ascetic, 
but  asceticism  of  a  high  and  pure  type  held  the 
best  religious  mind  of  his  people.  The  doctrine 
and  life  of  the  Essenes  must  in  some  respects  have 
had  his  sympathy.  The  Baptist  drew  him  by  his 
moral  fearlessness  and  high  moral  standard.  The 
Messianic  prophecies  of  his  nation  were  varied, 
some  couched  in  the  language  of  the  earthly  hope, 
and  some  suggesting  nothing  but  earthly  sorrow. 
It  is  possible  that  after  the  mystic  experience  of 
new  inspiration  that  came  in  the  act  of  submitting 
to  John's  baptism  Jesus  may  have  been  in  doubt 
as  to  God's  will  concerning  the  physical  side  of 
life.  John  did  not  seek  to  heal  the  body;  and  his 
influence  made  for  a  higher  asceticism  almost  as 
strongly  as  for  righteousness. 

It  is  evident  that  the  compassions  of  Jesus 
were  deeply  stirred  by  the  bodily  and  mental 
weaknesses  which  were  the  common  lot  of  his 
people.  With  his  perfect  health,  fasting  was  the 
only  means  by  which  he  could  gain  the  experience 
of  the  vital  exhaustion  which  disease  or  privation 
brings.  The  practice  of  fasting  in  a  desert  place 
to  attain  mystic  power  was  not  uncommon.  The 
desire  to  probe  physical  suffering  to  its  depths  and 
know  its  utmost  value  as  a  means  of  approaching 
God  may  most  naturally  have  been  part,  if  not 
the  greater  part,  of  that  driving  of  the  Spirit  that 
led  him  into  the  wilderness.  There  he  made  trial 
of  physical  weakness. 

We  are  told  by  one  of  the  evangelists  that  the 
devil  tempted  him  all  the  time  that  he  was 
without  food;    and  all  of  them  agree  that  when 


chap,  i    FASTING   AND    TEMPTATION    295 

exhaustion  was  extreme,  eventually  bringing  with 
it,  we  may  assume,  weakened  volition,  lack  of 
control  over  the  imagination  —  the  delirium  of 
starvation,  the  devil's  great  opportunity  came. 
In  that  hour  of  intense  trial,  and  in  the  relief  of 
victory  when  angels  ministered  to  his  bodily  needs, 
with  the  insight  that  comes  in  each  strong  crisis 
of  a  seer's  life,  Jesus  must  have  made  his  reckon- 
ing once  for  all  as  to  the  part  the  flesh  played  in 
man's  salvation. 

What  evidence  have  we  of  the  form  his  thought 
took  ?  Never  after  his  temptation  did  Jesus  be- 
tray any  doubt  as  to  what  his  "Father's  business" 
was  with  the  bodies  and  minds  of  men.  He  gave 
health  and  strength  of  body  and  mind  to  all  who 
would  trust  him,  and  unhesitatingly  affirmed  the 
Father  to  be  the  giver  of  volitional  and  physical 
completeness,  and  the  devil  to  be  the  origin  of 
all  that  troubled  it.  After  his  temptation  he 
never  fasted,  or  allowed  his  friends  to  go  hungry 
or  thirsty.  Very  significant  is  the  passage  he 
chose  to  cite  from  the  Jewish  scriptures  when  the 
Pharisees  challenged  the  right  of  his  disciples  to 
pluck  corn  on  the  Sabbath  day.  His  reply  to 
them  was  that  the  sacredness  of  the  Sabbath,  nay, 
the  sacredness  of  the  Temple,  ought  to  be  violated 
rather  than  the  body  weakened  by  fasting.  The 
thought  of  the  sacredness  of  the  body  as  com- 
parable to  the  sacredness  of  the  Temple  is  again 
emphasised  by  Jesus  when  he  refers  to  "the 
temple  of  his  body"  —  a  figure  which  St.  Paul 
repeats.  When,  where,  the  Son  of  Man  was 
Lord  his  disciples  should  eat;    when  the  hour  of 


296    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

the  prince  of  this  world  had  come,  and  he,  the 
prince  of  life,  was  taken  from  their  sight,  then  — 
with  inevitable  relapse  into  the  pious  practice  of 
an  earnest  age  —  his  disciples  would  fast,  but  not 
in  his  company.  In  the  one  sacred  rite  he 
originated,  in  which  he  would  carry  over  the  joy 
of  the  feast  of  atonement  into  his  kingdom,  the 
form  and  symbolism  he  used  grew,  we  cannot 
doubt,  out  of  the  intensity  with  which  he  realised 
that  the  unity  of  mind  and  body  was  as  sacred  as 
the  unity  of  God  and  man,  and  was  intended  to 
guard  against  that  last  infirmity  of  earnest  hearts, 
the  idea  that  communion  with  God  may  best  be 
attained  by  the  disunion  of  man's  physical  and 
spiritual  interests.  That  his  attitude  on  this 
matter  was  impressed  on  his  nearest  friends  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  when  to  their  vision  he 
returned  from  the  gate  of  death  they  saw  him 
eat  food  or  prepare  food  for  them.  If  this  vision 
was  subjective  merely,  it  proves  that  such  actions 
were  for  them  the  most  familiar  associations  of  his 
presence;  if  the  vision  was  objective  it  more 
powerfully  proves  the  opposition  of  Jesus  to  the 
principle  that  underlies  asceticism. 

How  terrible  to  our  Lord,  when  approaching 
his  death,  was  the  remembrance  of  the  time  of 
bodily  weakness  when  the  devil  had  been  able  to 
use  the  imagery  of  his  pure  mind  for  malignant 
purposes!  His  phrase  "the  prince  of  this  world 
cometh"  must  have  been  prompted  by  the  re- 
collection of  the  fallacious  glory  of  the  mountain 
peak  and  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  Jesus  could 
not  fear  those  who  could  only  kill  the  body,  but 


chap,  i    FASTING   AND   TEMPTATION    297 

he  had  surely  learned  by  fasting  that,  as  the  pulses 
beat  low  and  vital  force  ebbed,  the  Evil  Will,  even 
when  he  had  nothing  in  common  with  his  own, 
would  still  have  power.  When  he  spoke  of  that 
"hour  and  power  of  darkness"  he  could  not  have 
failed  to  remember  the  shadow  of  the  deadly  faint 
of  starvation  and  the  force  of  the  alluring  com- 
mands, "If  thou  be  the  Son  of  God,  work,  as  other 
men  do,  for  thine  own  ends;  use,  as  other  men  do, 
thine  own  powers  for  thine  own  help."  God  is 
seen  by  the  pure  in  heart  while  mind  retains  its 
normal  power  over  brain  and  body;  when  this 
control  is  falling  away,  then  he  who  has  power  to 
lead  the  passing  soul  to  the  gates  of  hell  has  his 
best  chance.  It  is  when  the  blood  ebbs  from  the 
brain  that  hope  in  God  is  most  apt  to  fail.  As 
we  gaze  upon  the  cross  we  hear  the  very  details 
of  the  first  temptation  repeat  themselves:  "If  he 
be  the  Son  of  God  let  him  save  himself."  "If  he 
has  cast  himself  on  God,  let  him  see  if  God  will 
hold  him  up."  In  his  extremity  he  was  led  to 
think  that  God  had  forsaken  him;  the  full  mean- 
ing of  this  we  do  not  know,  but  we  see  it  to  be  in 
harmony  with  the  belief  of  Jesus  that  man's  health 
is  a  citadel  of  God  in  this  earthly  life. 

We  cannot  believe  that  Jesus  intended  to 
endorse,  or  in  any  way  encourage,  the  effort  to 
increase  the  divine  fire  by  cooling  the  embers  of 
every  earthly  hope.  Your  father  in  heaven 
numbers  the  hairs  of  your  head,  knows  your  earthly 
needs,  will  clothe  you  like  the  flowers,  and  feed 
you  as  easily  as  the  birds  are  fed.  God  so  loved 
the  world  that  he  gave  his  Son.     All  this  was  not 


298    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

teaching  to  make  earth  appear  unworthy  of  man's 
love.  Whoso  gives  up  father  or  mother  or  houses 
or  lands  for  my  sake  shall  receive  a  hundred-fold 
in  this  present  time.  The  meek  shall  inherit  the 
earth.  The  Son  of  Man  who,  as  he  himself  said, 
"came  eating  and  drinking,"  gave  man  every 
earthly  gift  except  riches,  entered  by  sympathy 
into  every  earthly  joy  that  was  not  vicious,  offered 
salvation  from  every  earthly  care  except  the  care 
of  love  for  the  life  of  men.  He  never  spoke  of 
earth  as  being  unfit  to  be  the  scene  of  God's 
heavenly  activities.  What  then  ?  If  he  came  to 
bring  a  salvation  as  truly  earthly  as  it  was  purely 
of  heaven,  did  he  not  come  also  to  fulfil  the  hope 
of  those  who  looked  beyond  the  things  of  sense 
for  their  only  satisfaction  —  who  felt  that  earth  was 
of  no  value  to  them  except  as  a  path  to  heaven  ? 
On  the  contrary  it  was  out  of  this  very  doctrine 
of  God's  care  for  the  body  that  Jesus  educed  the 
triumphant  certainty  of  God's  faithfulness  to  man's 
immortal  spirit.  It  is  the  "how  much  more"  of 
all  his  parabolic  teaching  which  compels  us  to 
glorify  rather  than  vilify  the  lower  factor  in  the 
comparison.  If  God  clothe  the  grass  of  the  field 
so  splendidly,  how  much  more  shall  he  clothe  man. 
If  his  care  is  so  great  for  the  sparrow,  how  much 
more  for  man.  And  the  sequence  of  thought  goes 
on :  if  food  is  given  for  the  body,  how  much  more 
will  the  life  within  be  fed.  The  gift  is  sacred; 
how  much  more  the  altar  without  whose  spiritual 
sanctity  the  gift  would  be  nothing.  Greater  than 
the  temple  is  he  that  dwelleth  in  the  temple.  The 
letter  is  nothing  except  as  the  expression  of  spirit. 


chap,  i    FASTING   AND    TEMPTATION    299 

Now  clearly  the  whole  force  of  this  argument  by 
comparison  depends  on  making  the  most  of  the 
lesser  thing  in  the  comparison.  The  greatness  of 
God's  care  for  the  body  is  the  evidence  of  his  still 
greater  care  for  the  soul.  The  inner  life  and  the 
life  beyond  the  veil  rise  in  value  in  proportion  as 
the  outer  life  and  the  life  here  is  seen  to  be  valued 
by  God;  and  just  in  proportion  to  the  stress  laid 
upon  the  glory  of  the  spiritual  it  becomes  safe  and 
necessary  to  emphasise  the  glory  of  the  material. 

In  putting  the  supreme  emphasis  on  the  inner 
and  heavenly  life  Jesus  emphasised  its  dangers  as 
they  were  never  emphasised  before.  In  proportion 
as  the  spirit  is  more  than  the  flesh  the  sins  of  the 
spirit  are  worse  than  the  sins  of  the  flesh.  There- 
fore, though  God  intends  man  to  have  moral  and 
physical  completeness,  the  Christian  will  be  willing 
to  suffer  physical  ill  if  so  he  may  rescue  his  fellow 
from  spiritual  suffering  which  is  so  much  worse 
than  any  physical  suffering.  Thus  it  is  that 
human  pain  becomes  a  factor  in  the  plan  of 
salvation.  Jesus  declares  that  in  the  supreme  and 
eternal  aspect  of  his  life  man  may  sin  most  deeply, 
may  lose  himself;  and  he  holds  up  the  picture  of 
this  possibility  before  the  eyes  of  the  compassionate. 
It  is  to  the  compassion  and  magnanimity  of  the 
children  of  the  kingdom  that  Jesus  makes  his 
appeal  when  by  his  whole  example,  his  every  act 
and  word,  he  urges  the  missionary  life  on  all. 
There  is  no  imitation  of  Jesus  possible  outside  the 
missionary  life;  in  the  exercise  of  whatever  calling, 
wherever  he  be,  always,  in  speech  or  silence,  in 
action  or  passion,   the   child  of  the  kingdom   is 


300    HIS    WAYS   AND    OUR    WAYS 

one  "sent"  to  bring  the  world  to  God.  As  a 
missionary  a  man  will  always  come  to  hand-to- 
hand  grapple  with  all  the  forms  of  pain,  for  they 
are  the  instruments  of  the  forces  of  evil.  It  is 
the  acceptance  of  injustice  and  wrong  by  the 
missionary  which  drives  home  his  message  at  last 
to  the  heart  of  the  unthankful  and  unjust.  Hence 
pain  has  saving  grace,  not  for  him  who  suffers  it, 
but  for  him  who  inflicts  it  upon  the  innocent.  It 
is  certainly  the  salvation  of  the  persecutor  that  is 
the  reward  of  the  persecuted.  To  be  the  salt  of 
the  earth,  to  be  the  light  of  the  world,  is  not  a 
personal  honour,  not  a  private  reward;  it  is  to 
share  in  the  joy  and  in  the  pain  of  God,  who 
works  for  the  ultimate  perfection  of  his  whole 
creation. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    PROTEST    OF   THE    PARABLE 

To  be  universal  a  religion  ought  to  be  a  living 
plant,  indigenous  to  humanity,  its  roots  struck 
far  and  wide  into  the  heart  of  this  nation  and 
that,  drawing  nourishment  from  all  the  ages  that 
are  past,  a  thing  old  yet  entirely  new,  containing 
all  that  is  essential  and  hampered  with  nothing 
unessential;  for  only  as  it  is  an  essential  thing, 
able  to  enter  into  the  temperaments  and  necessi- 
ties of  every  race  in  every  time  and  place,  a 
thing  without  which  nature  remains  incomplete 
and  human  nature  baffled  and  unsatisfied,  can  it 
reach  the  whole  world. 

When  the  Hebrew  tribes  left  Egypt  and 
settled  themselves  in  Canaan,  they  were  on  the 
ground  where  the  advanced  religions  of  Egypt 
and  Babylonia  touched  each  other;  it  was  also 
the  meeting-place  of  several  less  developed  tribal 
religions.  It  was  bound,  by  geographical  position, 
to  be  a  fighting  ground  for  many  nations,  to  be 
for  many  centuries  traversed  continually  by 
religions,  laws,  and  customs  from  Africa,  Asia, 
and    Europe.     The    moral    gains    of  the    various 

301 


3o2     HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

nations  of  Semitic  and  Aryan  stock  were  brought 
to  Zion,  not  because  of  her  greatness,  not  because 
of  her  political  strength,  but  in  spite  of  her 
insignificance  and  because  of  her  political  weak- 
ness. The  Hebrews  had  the  genius  for  religion, 
and  "the  heritage  of  the  children  of  the  Lord" 
was  a  school  of  many  nations,  in  which  their 
righteousness  was  developed,  as  all  strong 
righteousness  is,  by  the  choosing  of  the  good 
from  all  things  and  the  eschewing  of  the  evil. 
If  in  the  conflict  of  life  the  Israel  of  God,  tossed 
with  tempest  and  taking  no  comfort,  mistook  her 
strength  and  thought  that  to  eschew  the  evil  was 
the  primary  duty,  it  only  made  the  mistake  that 
the  human  heart,  corporate  or  individual,  always 
makes  till  it  meets  with  the  great  enlightenment 
that  transforms  the  moralist  into  saint  or  seer 
and  morality  into  a  Gospel  of  God. 

This  mistake  made  the  Jews,  in  their  thoughts 
and  literature,  assume  a  separatist  position  which 
does  not  correspond  with  their  actual  history. 
The  Jewish  religion  —  cradled  in  Egypt,  schooled 
in  Babylon,  its  home  a  pathway  of  nations,  its 
adherents  forced  to  learn  the  language  of  the 
Greeks  and  to  comprehend  the  laws  of  Rome  — 
was  formed  by  God  out  of  the  dust  of  religious 
battle.  The  "salvation"  which  was  "of  the 
Jews"  could  have  been  no  strong  tower,  no  house 
of  peace,  if  it  had  not  contained  all  the  energies 
of  truth  that  worked  for  the  development  and 
informed  the  progress  of  mankind.  To  be  able 
to  understand  colloquial  Greek,  to  be  ready  to 
talk  with   men   and   to   understand  what  was   in 


chap,  ii     PROTEST  OF  THE  PARABLE    303 

them,  and  to  be  within  reach  of  any  great  high- 
road of  the  Roman  Empire,  were,  in  the  days  of 
Jesus,  conditions  sufficient  for  acquiring,  not  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  foreign  systems  of  thought, 
but  that  fluent  essence  of  each  masterful  theology 
which  passes  from  heart  to  heart  in  beautiful 
imagery,  in  terse  aphorism,  and  in  unexpected 
precept. 

The  ignorance  of  the  European  peasant  has 
been  too  suggestive  in  this  connection;  it  has 
often  been  claimed  in  our  apologetic  writings  that 
there  was  a  like  ignorance  among  the  peasants  of 
Palestine  when  Jesus  lived  among  them,  which 
ignorance  is  urged  as  a  proof  of  our  Lord's 
inspiration.  But  the  ways  of  God  are  more 
natural.  There  could  not  have  been  any  such 
ignorance  in  the  home  at  Nazareth.  The  know- 
ledge Jesus  shows  of  the  Hebrew  scriptures 
evinces  a  mental  discipline  which  we  have  every 
reason  to  believe  was  the  result  of  the  usual  local 
instruction  in  the  law  and  the  prophets.  This 
mental  discipline  comes  out  in  that  incident  where 
the  doctors  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  are  startled 
with  the  intellectual  power  evinced  in  the  questions 
of  the  child  Jesus  at  the  age  when  curiosity  and 
thought  begin  to  develop.  These  doctors  received 
disciples  from  all  parts  of  the  civilised  world. 
They  were  quite  able  to  judge  of  a  boy's  mental 
calibre.  We  have,  then,  two  facts  that  help  us  to 
estimate  what  the  mental  equipment  of  Jesus  would 
be  —  the  fact  of  his  eager  intelligent  curiosity,  and 
the  fact  that  Galilee,  in  which  he  lived,  was  not 
dominated    by    that    small    Jewish    school   which 


3o4    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

set  itself  to  resist  foreign  influence.  At  this  time 
the  Jews  of  the  Dispersion  from  every  known 
land,  proselytes  from  every  nation,  who  seem  to 
have  come  chiefly  from  the  intellectual  classes,  with 
traders  and  political  agents,  were  always  travelling 
through  Galilee  and  Samaria  to  Jerusalem,  espe- 
cially to  the  great  annual  feast.  From  the  age  of 
twelve  to  that  of  thirty  Jesus  travelled  once  a 
year,  making  the  same  slow,  pleasant  journey  on 
this  caravan  road.  We  cannot  suppose  that,  with 
a  mind  full  of  eager  questions  concerning  religion, 
he  would  remain  ignorant  of  such  things  as  Gen- 
tile pilgrims  could  teach.  The  honourable  place 
which  he  assigns  to  the  Gentiles  from  east  and 
west  and  north  and  south  in  the  kingdom  of 
God,  the  incidents  in  which  he  repeatedly  held 
up  their  faith  as  an  example  to  the  Jews,  are 
consonant,  not  only  with  his  deep  insight,  but  with 
a  knowledge  of  other  nations  and  other  religions. 

Let  us  consider  what  the  outlook  upon  the 
world  at  this  time  must  have  been  to  a  Jew 
deeply  impressed  with  the  power  and  love  of  God. 

In  so  far  as  men  could  worship  God  by  prayer, 
by  praise,  by  offerings,  by  alms-giving  and  by 
self-discipline,  men  did  worship  him.  God  could 
not  be  unrighteous  to  forget  their  work  and 
labour  of  love  —  the  holy  ministry  which  in  some 
form  every  religion  inculcated.  A  good  God 
must  have  imparted  himself  to  the  worshipping 
millions  of  his  children  on  earth  to  the  extent 
that  they  could  learn  of  him,  and  yet  they  were 
all  disputing  as  to  his  name  and  nature  and  the 
way  in  which  he  was  to  be  approached.     Again, 


chap,  ii     PROTEST  OF  THE  PARABLE    305 

what  the  reason  of  man  could  do  in  approaching 
God  by  the  rules  and  abstractions  of  metaphysical 
thought  had  been  done.  God  being  eager  to 
impart  himself  to  man  everywhere  and  always, 
so  far  as  man  by  thinking  could  then  attain  to 
him  he  must  already  have  attained;  for  a  further 
step  toward  God  it  was  not  more  knowledge  that 
was  wanted,  but  a  fitter  man.  Had  it  been 
possible  to  frame  in  human  thought  an  unerring 
presentation  of  God,  a  system  of  worship  that 
would  be  a  perfect  vehicle  of  approach  to  God, 
it  was  certain  that  man  had  no  words  in  which  to 
express  it,  no  heart  fitted  to  perceive  its  perfection. 
It  was  not  a  new  religion  that  was  needed,  but  a 
new  man  —  new  men  better  able  to  know  them- 
selves and  their  fellows,  hence  to  understand  the 
simple  secret  of  God. 

There  were  sufficient  data,  from  the  Jewish 
point  of  view,  on  which  to  form  these  conclusions. 
The  Jews  in  Palestine  were  only  the  centre  of  a 
large  and  virile  nation  which  had  spread  itself 
into  every  place  where  the  Greek  or  Latin 
civilisation  obtained.  While  the  Jews  of  the 
Dispersion  kept  themselves  ceremonially  separate 
from  the  nations  among  whom  they  lived,  they 
were  everywhere  accreting  to  their  religion  pros- 
elytes from  the  thoughtful  classes  of  the  heathen. 
The  best  features  of  the  Jewish  religion  were,  to 
the  spiritually-minded,  simple  enough  and  pure 
enough  to  be  the  means  of  a  much  higher  national 
life  than  the  world  had  seen.  But  the  ethics  of  a 
nation  are  not  to  be  estimated  by  the  few  written 
pages  that  represent  the  highest  development  of 


3o6    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

its  moral  genius  so  much  as  by  the  beliefs  and 
practices  of  the  majority  of  its  people.  The 
exaltation  of  Greek  ethical  thought  was  followed 
by  the  swift  decadence  of  the  Greek  race,  and  this 
is  an  instance  of  what  is  characteristic  of  the 
religious  world  at  the  Christian  era.  Its  attention 
was  fixed  on  all  those  aspects  of  life  that  are 
matter  for  argument.  Philosophers  were  busy 
trying  to  probe  to  the  reality  beneath  appearance, 
but  the  knowledge  they  gained  was  not  widely 
applied  to  life.  The  Jewish  religion,  which  to 
the  spiritual  few  appeared  to  have  such  an  un- 
paralleled opportunity  for  healing  the  nations,  was 
wasting  its  strength  upon  fantastic  excesses  of 
doctrine  and  ritual  and  casuistry.  The  dry  rot  of 
the  literalism  and  materialistic  follies  of  the  school 
that  repelled  Hellenism  were  only  a  little  worse 
than  the  allegorical  symbolism  of  the  Hellenistic 
Jews.  Everywhere,  in  its  pursuit  of  God,  the 
world  was  chiefly  intent  upon  what  could  be  spoken 
and  written  and  argued  about.  And  this  universal 
disputation  between  different  religions,  and  between 
different  sects  within  religions,  had  its  worst  shadow 
in  the  proportionate  bigotry  and  narrowness  of 
such  small  sections  as  agreed  among  themselves. 

It  would  certainly  seem,  from  the  form  his 
ministry  took,  that  Jesus  regarded  the  world  as 
famine-stricken,  trying  to  feed  upon  husks,  fight- 
ing with  swords  and  with  wTords  concerning  codes 
and  legends,  ceremonies  and  doctrines,  wasting  its 
strength  in  vain  repetitions  and  much  speaking, 
and  overlooking  what  would  satisfy  and  unite. 
Jesus  made  his  great  protest  against  the  barren 


chap,  ii     PROTEST  OF  THE  PARABLE    307 

strife  of  religious  tongues  by  refusing  to  teach 
except  in  parables.  His  very  explanations  of  his 
parables  were  still  parables.  When  he  quotes  the 
Old  Testament  he  chooses  its  parables.  He  never 
spoke  of  heaven  except  in  figures  of  earth,  or  of 
God  except  in  terms  of  man.  "Without  a  parable 
spake  he  not."  Parabolic  teaching  has  this  for  its 
very  essence,  that  its  form  is  not  essential;  all 
that  man  can  speak  or  write  or  argue  about  is 
a  dress,  and  only  a  dress,  clothing  an  inner  truth. 
But  the  choice  of  parable  as  a  method  of  conveying 
truth,  although  it  implies  that  no  particular  form 
is  essential,  also  implies  that  form  is  important. 
There  is  no  method  of  conveying  thought  by 
speech  which  draws  so  much  attention  to  the  form. 
The  form  is  everything  except  essential.  Another 
form  may  convey  the  truth  just  as  well,  but  to 
convey  it  as  well  it  must  be  as  beautiful,  as  simple, 
as  true  to  the  conditions  of  sense  and  as  sugges- 
tive of  the  spiritual  lesson.  Here,  then,  are  two 
requisites  of  the  way  in  which  the  religion  Jesus 
sought  to  implant  must  be  conveyed  to  the  world 
—  it  must  have  an  outward  form  precise  and 
beautiful,  but  the  form  must  never  be  considered 
essential;   there  may  be  many  forms. 

We  come  then  to  the  truth  that  was  to  be 
conveyed  by  this  message.  It  was  a  life.  In  the 
ministry  of  Jesus  we  meet  with  nothing  but  the 
concrete  man  in  a  concrete  environment.  He 
maintained  a  profound  silence  upon  those  aspects 
of  religion  that  could  not  be  brought  to  the  test 
of  religious  experience.  God's  forgiveness  meant 
the  reception  of  that  forgiveness  in  man's  religious 


3o8    HIS    WAYS   AND    OUR    WAYS    book  iv 

consciousness.  God's  providence  was  to  be  tested 
by  man  exactly  as  man's  providence  was  tested  by 
his  child.  Man's  relation  to  God  is  to  be  appre- 
hended, as  he  apprehends  his  relation  to  his  fellow- 
man,  in  apprehending  Jesus. 

Jesus  came  to  men  who  were  full  of  theories 
and  wasting  their  zeal.  He  said,  in  effect,  it  is 
new  life  that  is  wanted  —  the  life  we  now  live  fuller, 
stronger,  raised  in  all  its  aspects  toward  perfection. 
It  is  more  love  that  is  wanted  —  natural,  human 
love,  deeper,  truer,  and  flowing  into  all  channels. 
This  was  not  a  new  idea.  It  had  been  the 
transient  vision  of  the  highest  and  lowliest  of 
mankind.  What  was  new  was  the  putting  it  into 
practice,  the  gift  of  a  perfect  life  and  a  perfect 
love  to  the  empty  arms  and  aching  heart  of  the 
world. 

The  Christian  believes  that  history  vindicates 
the  method  of  Jesus.  Just  in  so  far  as  men  have 
partaken  of  his  life  by  living  it  have  they  com- 
muned with  God  and  blessed  the  world;  just  in 
so  far  as  they  have  loved  the  Perfect  Love  they 
have  loved  the  world  in  deed  and  in  truth  and 
given  themselves  to  save  it;  just  in  so  far  as  they 
have  done  this  they  have  attained  to  a  wider 
outlook  and  wider  knowledge  and  seen  a  more 
glorious  vision  of  God.  Wherever  the  Christian 
has  failed  it  has  commonly  been  by  reason  of  his 
failure  to  trust  the  method  of  Jesus  for  himself  and 
for  his  own  age. 

The  present  age  in  religious  matters  is  very 
like  the  age  of  Jesus.  How  many  different 
religions  we  have  !     How  many  sects  within  the 


chap,  ii    PROTEST  OF  THE   PARABLE    309 

religions  !  And  those  particular  sects  which  claim 
to  be  the  only  true  sect  feel  the  reaction  of  their 
contest  with  the  world  most  by  its  result  upon 
their  inward  attitude;  a  degree  of  bigotry  and 
ignorance  is  forced  upon  them  by  the  intense 
partisan  feeling  which  is  needed  to  maintain  their 
outward  propaganda. 

We  do  not  need  to  turn  our  attention  to  a 
better  organisation,  still  less  do  we  want  to  break 
down  such  organisations  as  exist.  We  want  the 
intense  realisation,  based  upon  psychological  fact, 
based  upon  the  highest  inspiration  of  the  prophets, 
based  upon  the  practice  and  preaching  of  Jesus, 
that  those  who  offer  to  God  the  same  thoughts, 
the  same  desires,  the  same  adoration,  have  not  to 
hope  for  union  with  each  other  —  they  are  in  union 
with  each  other;  their  union  is  not  to  become  a 
strength,  but  is  a  strength  —  a  strength  which  no 
outward  organisation,  having  its  own  sort  of 
strength,  can  increase.  We  need  to  realise  that 
those  who  are  thus  united  to  one  another  in 
purpose  are  at  the  same  time  at  one  with  the 
purposes  of  God,  are  members  of  an  organism 
whose  health  and  growth  are  of  God,  and  that  the 
consummation  of  his  purposes  is  sure.  There  is 
always  the  need  of  withdrawing  temporarily  from 
the  things  of  sense  in  order  to  find  God.  In  the 
matter  of  such  union  as  Jesus  taught,  we  need  a 
frequent  withdrawal  of  attention  from  external 
union.  "Neither  for  these  only  do  I  pray,  but 
for  them  also  that  believe  on  me  through  their 
word;  that  they  may  all  be  one;  even  as  thou, 
Father,  art  in  me,  and  I  in  thee,  that  they  also 


3io    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  rv 

may  be  in  us :  that  the  world  may  believe  that 
thou  didst  send  me.  And  the  glory  which  thou 
hast  given  me  I  have  given  unto  them;  that  they 
may  be  one,  even  as  we  are  one;  I  in  them,  and 
thou  in  me,  that  they  may  be  perfected  into  one; 
that  the  world  may  know  that  thou  didst  send  me, 
and  lovedst  them,  even  as  thou  lovedst  me."1  It 
is  here  quite  obvious  that  the  union  of  Jesus  with 
God  was  not  an  outward  union.  The  glory 
which  the  Father  gave  him  was  an  inner  glory  of 
the  heart  which  by  the  sympathetic  could  be 
observed  only  in  his  gracious  attitude  and  bene- 
volent works,  and  which  altogether  escaped  the 
notice  of  the  officious  partisan  or  blinded  devotee. 

All  that  man  can  learn  of  God's  truth,  by  pure 
reason  or  practical  philosophy,  by  religious  systems, 
by  outward  symbols  or  by  their  absence,  it  is 
certain  that  man  has  learned  and  is  learning. 
There  is  no  window  of  the  human  heart  which 
man  opens  Godward  into  which  God  himself  does 
not  gladly  come.  And  if  in  the  midst  of  all  these 
we  still  faint  for  his  fulness  of  life,  we  must  realise 
that  all  we  can  do  to  attain  it  is  to  seek  some 
more  fundamental  condition  which  evidently  we 
still  lack.  The  great  reformation  of  Jesus  lay  in 
pointing  out  this  fundamental  condition  and  laying 
the  whole  stress  of  man's  search  for  God  upon 
realising  it. 

The  supreme  duty  of  fostering  the  fundamental 
condition  of  a  pure  life  and  a  strong  determina- 
tion to  love  will  not  be  denied  by  the  advocates 
of  any  sane  philosophy  or  any  reasonable  system 

1  St.  John  xvii.  20-23. 


chap,  ii    PROTEST  OF  THE   PARABLE    311 

of  religion.  It  goes  without  saying  that  it  is 
necessary  to  man  to  give  his  adhesion  at  any  given 
time  to  such  theory  and  practice  as  seem  to  him 
most  reasonable.  The  living  of  the  Christ-life  in 
the  spiritual  and  moral  sphere  ought  not  to  come 
into  collision  with  the  doctrinaires  of  any  school, 
any  more  than  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  of 
bodily  health  by  faith  in  God  ought  to  come  into 
collision  with  the  principles  of  medical  science. 
Just  as  no  physician  worthy  of  the  name  can  do 
aught  but  rejoice  in  the  actual  increase  of  health 
and  strength  that  any  patient  may  obtain  through 
faith  in  God,  so  inward  life  in  the  spiritual  sphere 
by  its  increase  and  its  greater  activities  of  love 
ought  not  to  distress  the  most  bigoted  advocate 
of  any  religious  party.  He  may  desire  to  divert 
it  into  channels  in  which  by  its  very  nature  it 
cannot  flow,  but  there  are  channels  of  love  in 
harmony  with  every  Christian  system  into  which 
it  can  flow,  for  it  is  a  missionary  life,  and  its 
message  is  to  express  God's  love. 

Surely,  then,  looking  to  the  future,  we  need 
not  be  deterred  from  venturing  upon  the  life  of 
faith  in  full  accordance  with  the  life  and  teaching 
of  Jesus  merely  because  our  imagination  fails  when 
we  try  to  think  in  what  outward  organisation  or 
system  of  worship  it  could  most  fitly  be  embodied. 
It  is  not  matter  that  forms  life,  but  life  that  forms 
matter;  it  is  not  thought  that  forms  life,  but  life 
that  takes  the  form  of  thought.  Those  who  cry 
that  without  finality  in  organisation  or  in  thought, 
we  cannot  have  life  are  expecting  the  effect  before 
the  cause. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    FIGHTING   SPIRIT 

The  life  which  Jesus  taught  begins  its  reform  with 
the  nearest  and  smallest  changes,  and  they,  in  their 
turn,  bring  about  the  greater  changes  in  ways  that 
we  can  neither  see  nor  foresee.  We  invert  the 
order  in  our  minds,  and  then  cry  that  we  cannot 
accept  his  rule.  For  instance,  we  are  faced  with 
the  entire  antagonism  of  Jesus  to  the  fighting 
spirit;  but  we  do  not  see  how  it  is  possible  for 
man  to  give  up  fighting.  We  overlook  the  private 
possibilities  that  lie  to  our  hands,  and  exhibit  the 
largest  and  ultimate  part  of  the  problem,  asking 
how  the  world  can  be  rid  of  international  war. 
What  folly  is  this  !  Let  common  sense  come  to 
our  aid,  and  we  shall  find  it  a  wonderful  echo  of 
what  we  have  been  calling  the  visionary  ideal  of 
Jesus.  What  advantage  is  it  to  the  cause  of  love 
for  a  man  to  refuse  to  fight  the  enemies  of  his 
country  abroad  and  stay  to  fight  his  brother  at 
home  ?  Or  if  he  refrain  from  striking  his  brother, 
is  peace  the  gainer  if  he  nourish  ill  feeling  and 
repeat  slanders,  even  though  the  ill  feeling  and 
slander  be  only   political  or  religious  ?     Are     we 

312 


chap,  in     THE    FIGHTING   SPIRIT  313 

in  a  position,  individual  or  corporate,  that  would 
make  the  cessation  of  international  war  a  boon  ? 
This  is  the  first  question  to  ask.  Let  us  begin  at 
home,  and  each  man  with  his  own  heart  and  house- 
hold. And  first  let  us  be  straight  in  our  thinking 
and  afterwards  promote  peace.  The  hypocrisy 
only  half  unconscious,  with  which  we  talk  about 
our  desire  to  be  at  peace  with  all  mankind  while 
we  hate  our  neighbour,  is  a  tribute  to  the  fact 
that  the  Christian  ideal  does  not  admit  of  the 
motives  that  lead  to  disputes,  but  is  also  a  proof 
of  that  loose,  emotional  thinking  which  is  a  worse 
enemy  to  the  cause  of  Jesus  than  free  thinking. 

What  really  makes  it  impossible  at  present  to 
realise  the  peace  of  the  Christ-life  is  that  we  love 
fighting,  and  that  it  seems  to  us  exceedingly 
wholesome.  How  else  can  we  show  that  we  are  in 
earnest  about  anything  ?  How  else  can  we  defend 
the  weak  against  the  strong  ?  How  else  can  we 
ensure  that  the  right  shall  prevail  ?  And  when  we 
ask  ourselves  these  questions  we  picture  some 
foreign  enemy  advancing  ruthless  against  our  own 
defenceless  hearths,  some  domestic  tyrant  oppress- 
ing our  defenceless  neighbours,  and  the  enemies  of 
God  despoiling  his  church  and  setting  up  a  lie  in 
the  place  of  the  truth,  while  we  sit  indolent,  smiling 
upon  the  transgressor;  our  blood  boils  at  the 
thought  of  any  man  advocating  such  a  condition 
of  things,  and  we  all  feel  ready  to  die  in  battle. 

Let  us  be  honest.  What  living  sacrifices  have 
we  made  toward  building  up  stronger  conditions 
in  church  and  state  and  domestic  life,  in  all  those 
ways  in  which  we  could  have  sacrificed  our  lives 


3H    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  rv 

for  them  without  fighting  ?  If  we  have  done  little 
in  times  of  peace  except  to  please  ourselves,  let  us 
realise  that,  in  plunging  into  every  contest,  it  is 
not  sacrifice  for  some  great  end,  but  battle  that 
we  love.  Let  us  admit  that  we  love  it  because 
it  seems  an  effective  weapon  for  good,  while  to 
exercise  our  powers  thus  is  a  pleasurable  activity. 
Let  us  go  further,  and  say  that  it  is  good.  In 
comparison  with  a  life  that  is  slack  and  pleasure- 
loving,  strife  is  good;  in  comparison  with  a  life 
that  is  only  keen  for  what  it  can  get,  warfare  in  a 
good  cause  is  noble.  The  energies  with  which 
nature  has  endowed  man  must  be  developed  to 
their  utmost  capacity.  Religion  that  does  not  do 
this  is  not  in  harmony  with  the  laws  of  nature 
and  of  God. 

And  the  call  of  Jesus  is  for  all  the  forces  of 
human  heroism.  He  instituted  a  reformation 
which  was  to  begin  in  the  individual  heart.  The 
aggregate  of  such  renovated  hearts  becomes  an 
organism  which  grows  within  any  outward  organ- 
isation of  state  or  nation.  The  problem  of  inter- 
national war  will  only  become  practical  when,  in 
respect  of  fighting,  the  ideal  and  practice  of  the 
individual  Christian  is  that  of  Jesus.  What  is  the 
sequence  by  which  Jesus  attains  the  reformation  of 
the  individual  heart  ?  Purpose  must  acquire  a 
divine  strength;  the  determination  to  give  must 
dominate  the  desire  to  get;  the  ambition  to  serve 
must  regulate  the  necessity  of  being  served;  the 
desire  to  receive  honour  from  men  must  vanish  in 
the  honour  of  being  a  friend  of  God;  and,  above 
all,    there    must    be    no    slovenly    thinking,    no 


chap,  in      THE    FIGHTING   SPIRIT  315 

hypocritical  resting  in  words  that  do  not  represent 
the  heart  truly.  This  is  the  beginning  of  his 
reformation  of  the  individual  heart.  The  first  step 
in  the  Kingdom,  nay,  toward  the  entrance  of  the 
Kingdom,  is  strong  personal  purpose.  Something 
has  to  be  done,  and  all  things  that  hinder  are  to  be 
put  aside.  When  Jesus  met  the  rich  man  whose 
character  had  both  moral  and  spiritual  beauty,  he 
said  to  him,  in  effect,  "What  you  lack  is  strength 
of  purpose,  a  purpose  that  counts  nothing  dear  in 
order  to  attain."  It  is  a  lack  characteristic  of 
those  who  have  all  they  want.  The  strength  of 
purpose  which  Jesus  demanded  is  too  strong  a 
vital  force  to  be  realised  in  any  one  simple  maxim 
of  conduct,  such  as  that  all  self-regarding  action  is 
wrong,  all  unselfish  action  right.  Hence  much 
talk  about  selfishness  and  unselfishness  is  loose  and 
misses  the  mark.  In  one  of  his  letters  the  late 
Prof.  Sidgwick  says,  "There  is  nothing  so  selfish 
as  work;"  and  in  this  connection  work  is  the 
expression  of  purpose.  Jesus  said  of  his  own 
career,  "For  this  cause  came  I  into  the  world;" 
the  private  claims  of  home  and  kindred  were 
subordinate  to  his  purpose,  and  his  purpose 
dominates  the  ages.  St.  Paul's  "This  one  thing 
I  do,"  turned  the  world  upside  down.  A  man 
without  a  mastering  purpose,  an  over-mastering 
ambition,  an  unquenchable  desire  for  true  honour, 
is  a  man  whose  life  is  not  worth  giving  to  God  or 
the  world.  He  may  as  well  keep  it  and  make  the 
most  of  it  for  his  own  ends  —  the  most  will  not  be 
much.  A  man  who  has  this  force  of  character  and 
uses   it   for  his   own   ends   is   represented   in   the 


3i6    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

imagery  of  Jesus  as  a  better  man  than  the  weak 
person  who  lives  on  good  intentions,  and  as  in  that 
respect  a  model  for  him.  But  undoubtedly  the 
great  power  that  Christianity  pre-eminently  has 
lies  in  its  gift  of  joy  which  elicits  overwhelming 
strength  of  purpose  and  ambition  and  makes 
heroism  from  such  material  as  is  ignored  by  other 
moral  movements.  From  the  broken  reed  the 
joy  of  Jesus  evokes  the  noblest  notes  of  heroic 
music;  from  smoking  flax  his  breath  can  bring  the 
fire  that  lights  and  warms  the  world.  But  the 
music  must  be  noble,  the  fire  must  reach  to  heaven. 
The  first  great  work  of  Jesus  is  to  evoke  purpose. 
There  must  be  ambition  and  unquenchable  desire, 
and  passion  that  bends  all  things  to  its  use. 

Next  in  the  order  of  Jesus  comes  the  manifes- 
tation of  the  purpose  in  life.  A  reformation  that 
begins  by  evoking  the  strong  flood  of  positive 
energies  in  the  individual  heart  will  surely  break 
through  old  standards  and  conventions;  it  must 
emphasise  individuality  and  produce  originality. 
The  inevitable  result  will  be  that  purpose  and  effort 
will  flow  into  new  channels. 

The  relation  between  life  and  individual  differ- 
ence is  so  close  that  fuller  life  must  always  be 
marked  by  more  individual  difference.  We  over- 
look this  partly  because  opinions  formed  without 
adequate  knowledge  are  the  most  annoying,  and 
therefore  the  most  commonly  observed,  outcome 
of  the  individual  difference  —  opinions  which  the 
individual  vanity  is  apt  to  flaunt,  like  some  eccentric 
and  absurd  personal  adornment.  A  personal 
opinion  which  in  any  way  controverts  the  common 


chap,  in      THE    FIGHTING   SPIRIT  317 

opinion  is  only  justified  by  a  more  than  common 
knowledge  of  the  facts  concerned,  a  degree  of 
knowledge  which  is  not  within  the  reach  of  many. 
Yet  although  ignorant  opinions  are  the  bad  bye- 
product  of  individual  reflection,  none  the  less  is  it 
true  that  the  most  widely  received  truth  is  a  dead 
letter  except  so  far  as  it  receives  the  individual 
impress. 

The  spirit  that  gives  life  only  manifests  itself 
in  individuality.  This  is  seen  in  vegetable  and 
animal  life;  in  human  life  the  individual  difference 
is  greatest.  We  are  told  that  there  are  no  two 
germs,  no  two  blades  of  grass,  alike :  this  appalls 
the  mind  and  gives  dignity  to  the  dust.  The  use 
and  beauty  of  this  minute  diversity  we  cannot 
comprehend;  but  we  do  know  intuitively  that 
humanity  would  cease  to  be  human,  and  God 
cease  to  be  God,  if  the  mill  of  the  universe  could 
turn  out  two  men  in  mind  and  heart  and  will  the 
same.  Two  little  children  who  built  their  toy 
bricks  always  alike  would  destroy  human  hope. 
Two  idiots  whose  senseless  habits  were  alike;  two 
men  of  genius  who  produced  the  same  epic,  the 
same  oratorio,  the  same  philosophy;  two  vain 
women  who  could  make  toys  of  men  with  the 
same  charm  or  tricks,  would  pronounce  our  final 
doom.  Gloom,  endless  gloom,  would  fall  upon 
our  hearts  if  the  human  duplicate  were  seen. 

It  follows  that  the  religion  which  begins  by 
exciting  more  intense  life  in  purpose  and  ambition 
will  certainly  be  propagated  by  such  original 
thought  and  enterprise  as  will  most  fully  express 
each  man.     Hackneyed  and  conventional  activities 


318    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

will  mark  its  temporary  decline,  never,  as  we  are 
apt  to  suppose,  its  increase.  That  Jesus  did 
make  his  appeal  to  force  of  will  and  ambition  and 
the  desire  for  self-realisation  and  expression,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  His  cry  was  not  for  common 
men  and  women  but  for  heroes.  He  rejected 
men  who  showed  themselves  distracted  with  other 
interests,  or  slack,  or  fearful.  He  called  men 
from  the  hardy,  adventurous  class;  he  called  for 
men  who  would  fear  nothing,  who  would  go 
unhampered  by  possessions  to  the  conquest  of  the 
world.  He  set  before  them  a  task  the  magnitude 
of  which  made  its  accomplishment  appear  quite 
impossible.  He  left  them  to  exercise  their  own 
wit  in  their  choice  of  methods,  and  he  set  before 
them  a  reward  which  could  only  be  attained  by 
faithfulness  that  reached  to  death.  He  held  the 
door  of  this  splendid  opportunity  open,  not  only 
to  the  gifted  and  the  free,  but  to  the  slave,  the 
woman,  and  the  child.  The  paths  of  intercession, 
not  the  least  heroic  of  Christian  ways,  start  from 
the  scenes  of  humblest  toil,  offering  to  all  the 
forces  and  originality  of  the  soul  an  entrance  to 
the  highest  heaven,  an  influence  in  the  empire  of 
the  world. 

But  further,  while  Jesus  appealed  to  all  that 
was  positive  and  active  in  the  human  heart,  the 
very  formation  of  purpose,  with  all  its  outflow, 
imposes  a  corresponding  restraint.  To  press 
toward  a  mark  is  not  only  to  neglect,  but  to 
reject,  all  that  hinders.  Here  it  is  evident  that 
if  a  man's  ambition  soars  to  the  salvation  of  a 
race,  he  must  have  a  very  full  knowledge  of  the 


chap,  in      THE    FIGHTING   SPIRIT  319 

complex  conditions  of  life,  or  some  simple  guiding 
principle  which  carries  within  it  a  separating  force 
by  which  to  distinguish  effective  from  ineffective 
means.  The  most  complete  knowledge  of  magnetic 
force  can  only  lead  men  to  utilise  it  by  conform- 
ing to  its  laws,  and  such  knowledge  will  produce 
magnificent  results;  but  long  before  such  know- 
ledge was  thought  of,  the  use  of  the  compass 
enabled  every  mariner  to  cross  the  sea.  The 
example  and  teaching  of  Jesus  is  such  a  compass 
for  the  man  who  is  simple  enough  and  wise 
enough  to  accept  it;  and  he  from  his  experience 
can  prove  that  it  answers  the  purpose.  In  the 
matter  of  the  fighting  spirit,  the  compass  has 
not  been  accepted  by  corporate  Christianity. 
Instead  of  crossing  the  sea  with  the  splendid 
audacity  of  faith,  we  as  a  body  have  determined 
our  devious  course  by  hugging  the  shores  of  ex- 
pediency, and  have  suffered  shipwreck. 

This  brings  us  to  the  crown  and  culmination 
of  the  change  of  heart  which  Jesus  works  in  those 
who  truly  love  him.  When  a  man  bends  the 
whole  force  of  his  nature  upon  the  attainment  of 
Jesus,  he  has  the  intuitive  vision  of  truth  and  love 
always  at  one,  never  at  variance,  and  with  every 
step  he  takes  toward  the  realisation  of  the  Christ- 
life  his  vision  grows  clearer.  Such  a  man  knows 
that  he  has  always  with  him  a  force  greater  than 
that  of  twelve  legions  of  angels;  but  he  does  not 
use  his  power  to  coerce  or  weaken  his  fellow-men. 
Truth  cannot  suffer  loss.  As  well  slay  men  in 
defence  of  the  law  of  gravitation.  Love  is  already 
lost  when  we  draw  the  sword  in  her  defence.     We 


320    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  iv 

cannot  alter  natural  law  or  detract  from  natural 
force;  we  cannot  get  away  from  their  dominion. 
By  ignorance  and  disobedience  we  can  suffer  under 
them,  or  lose  their  beneficent  power.  It  is  only 
by  making  experiment  of  them  that  we  can  learn 
from  or  honour  them;  it  is  only  by  implicit 
obedience  that  we  can  win  from  them  any  blessing. 
The  salvation  of  Jesus  in  the  heart  of  a  man  causes 
him  to  realise  that  truth  and  love  are  one,  and 
that  nothing  man  can  do  can  alter  their  dominion 
or  gauge  their  force.  It  is  only  by  experiment  on 
the  lines  of  their  force  that  he  can  learn  or  teach 
Christianity;  it  is  only  by  implicit  obedience  to 
them  that  mankind  can  attain  to  any  further 
good. 

In  his  earthly  day  Jesus  came  saying,  "Turn 
from  what  you  are,  and  what  you  are  doing,  to  a 
better  life,  in  which  God  will  rule  and  defend  and 
bless  you."  To-day  he  comes  with  precisely  the 
same  call,  "Turn,  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
at  hand."  If  we  have  received  some  elements  of 
heaven  on  earth  from  our  Christian  fathers  and 
won  some  advantage  for  ourselves,  we  are  still  as 
far  from  what  is  possible  to  us  as  was  the  world 
when  Jesus  came.  To  think  otherwise  is  to  be 
among  the  righteous  and  effeminate  for  whom 
Jesus  has  no  vocation. 

Every  one  is  needed  for  some  part  of  the  three- 
fold enterprise  on  which  the  servants  of  Jesus  are 
sent.  All  that  benefits  the  body,  all  that  benefits 
the  mind,  all  that  makes  man  one  in  purpose 
and  hope  with  God,  is  to  be  achieved  by  them. 
What  strength,  what  ambition,  what  talent,  what 


chap,  in     THE    FIGHTING    SPIRIT  321 

honourable  impulse,  cannot  find  scope  in  such  a 
task  ?  Is  there  not  for  us,  as  there  was  for  St. 
Paul,  enough  to  tax  the  strength  and  craft,  the 
courage  and  resource,  that  any  man  can  use  in 
the  task  of  saving  men  rather  than  destroying 
them  ?  If  the  powers  of  all  Christian  men  were 
thus  employed  we  should  not  hear  of  the  needed 
discipline  of  war.  And  with  the  progress  of  ages 
the  work  to  which  Jesus  sends  his  servants  is  seen 
to  be  greater  and  more  varied.  Everywhere  on 
the  fringes  of  empire  there  is  constructive  work 
and  helpful  work  to  be  done  —  a  wrestle  with  the 
forces  of  nature,  a  battle  with  the  elements,  de- 
mand for  the  self-control  that  means  also  the  con- 
trol of  untutored  men.  Everywhere  there  is  an 
army  of  defence  wanted  at  home  for  the  rescue 
work  of  the  slum.  Everywhere  companies  of  boys 
and  men,  with  a  hero  for  a  leader  —  a  man  who 
can  organise  and  command  —  can  be  lifted  from 
the  degraded  and  criminal  classes  to  be  useful  citi- 
zens. There  is  danger,  there  is  certain  failure,  for 
men  who  have  not  high  qualities  of  courage  and 
generalship;  but  the  work  is  everywhere,  and  the 
soul  of  every  child  born  within  our  civilisation  who 
develops  only  to  base  uses  cries  to  God  against 
the  brother  who  turns  his  heroism  and  soldierly 
abilities  to  a  less  useful  end.  In  the  commerce 
of  the  world  Christ  calls  everywhere  for  the  spirit 
of  financial  martyrdom,  for  commercial  heroes 
who,  instead  of  seeking  immoderate  gain,  will 
create  in  commerce  safe  paths  for  the  feet  of  the 
poor  and  honest.  In  the  present  state  of  things 
such  men  will  almost  certainly  be  crushed  to  the 


322    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book 


IV 


wall,  but  their  followers  will  profit  by  their  loss. 
In  the  journalism  of  the  world  Christ  is  calling 
for  men  who  at  any  cost  will  refuse  to  lend  them- 
selves as  tools  to  party  spirit,  political  or  religious. 
There  is  no  learned  profession,  no  path  of  humble 
livelihood,  where  Christ  is  not  seeking  for  the 
pioneers  and  martyrs  of  a  newer  and  better  life. 

How  many  among  those  who  call  themselves 
Christian  men  are  working  like  heroes  in  the 
building  of  the  City  of  God  ?  Perhaps,  at  a  high 
estimate,  one  man  in  five  hundred.  The  least 
we  can  do  is  to  honour  those  who  thus  work; 
yet,  instead  of  that,  it  is  these  very  men  —  be 
they  bishops  or  missionaries  or  Salvation  Army 
captains  —  whom  we  continually  criticise,  holding 
them  responsible  for  the  low  standards  of  which 
we  ourselves  are  the  best  advertisement. 

But  let  us  be  quite  sure  of  one  thing  —  the  vital 
force  that  makes  a  hero  is  not  mimetic.  The 
outward  semblance  of  heroism  and  sainthood  will 
never  be  in  a  new  age  what  it  was  in  a  former  age. 
One  chief  source  of  our  lifelessness  is  that  we  all, 
like  the  typical  milliner's  apprentice,  want  to 
read  and  dream  about  some  once  manly  type 
of  virtue  and  honour  which  by  repetition  has 
become  artificial  and  therefore  vulgar.  Sainthood 
must  be  original  or  it  is  not  sainthood.  In  other 
paths  of  life  we  acknowledge  the  weakness  of 
imitation;  how  can  we  more  effectually  damn  a 
man  for  any  worldly  use  than  by  saying,  "He 
has  no  originality,  no  individual  resource"? 
Why  is  it  that  to-day  we  have  few  great  men 
except  in  the  field  of  science  ?     Largely  because, 


chap,  in      THE    FIGHTING    SPIRIT  323 

except  in  the  scientific  field,  we  test  greatness  by 
a  conventional  standard.  If  we  could  only  realise 
this  we  might  perhaps  be  roused  out  of  the  vul- 
garity of  our  religious  conformities  and  class 
prejudices  and  paltry  expectations. 

Consider  St.  Paul,  whose  inspiration  as  an 
apostle  can  only  be  truly  recognised  by  a  Church 
that  trains  all  her  sons  to  try  to  do  as  much  for 
God  as  he  did.  His  work  is  still  to  be  done  at 
home  and  abroad.  In  every  heathen  country  the 
dangers  he  encountered  are  still  to  be  met;  the 
hardships  he  suffered  are  still  to  be  endured;  the 
success  of  winning  half  a  continent  to  Christ  is 
still  open  to  men  who  have  his  pluck  and  his  stay- 
ing power,  his  enterprise  and  his  lowly  estimate  of 
his  own  righteousness.  It  is  not  indeed  a  great 
store  of  Christian  knowledge  or  love  that  is  needed 
to  start  with.  If  we  read  St.  Paul's  letters  in  the 
order  in  which  he  wrote  them  we  shall  see  how 
his  faith  and  knowledge  grew  by  degrees  and  with 
much  labour.  It  was  not  at  first  but  at  last  that 
he  wrote,  "  I  know  whom  I  have  believed,  and  am 
persuaded  that  he  is  able  to  keep  that  which  I 
have  committed  unto  him  against  that  day."  ! 

It  is  private  enterprise  that  Jesus  calls  for  first, 
and  the  reformation  we  so  sorely  need  must 
begin  in  the  silence  of  the  heart.  When  purpose 
is  strong,  restraint  will  be  as  natural  as  outflow. 
The  crying  need  of  the  world  is  not  legislation 
but  self-government,  not  the  taking  of  cities  but 
the  ruling  of  our  own  hearts.  We  are  most  of  us 
set  within  states  and  churches  which  are  not 
1  2  Tim.  i.  12. 


324    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

governed  by  the  people  in  them;  nor  yet  by  wise 
statesmen  and  ecclesiastics  whom  the  people  could 
blindly  trust;  they  are  governed  by  the  media 
through  which  the  people  get  their  information 
of  men  and  things  —  the  newspaper  or  dema- 
gogue, political  and  religious.  There  is  some 
saving  common  sense  within  us  about  these  mat- 
ters, for  we  all  profess  to  be  a  little  above  party 
belligerence,  and  to  think  ill  of  the  man  or  woman 
who  is  always  redolent  of  the  partisan  or  sectarian 
newspaper;  but  we  are  ourselves  the  more  vulner- 
able to  the  half-truths  we  are  constantly  hearing 
and  reading  because,  while  we  enjoy  them,  we  feel 
ourselves  able  to  discount  their  influence.  The 
root  of  the  matter  is  our  liking.  If  we  enjoy 
party  invective,  however  clever,  however  mod- 
erately worded,  against  any  set  of  men  —  Lib- 
erals or  Conservatives,  Democrats  or  Republicans, 
Socialists  or  Plutocrats,  Romanists  or  Protestants, 
Anglicans  or  Methodists,  Englishmen  or  Ger- 
mans, Irishmen  or  Americans  —  we  are  steadily 
cutting  ourselves  off  from  the  power  of  truth 
and  love.  Every  day  we  are  less  able  to  see 
what  is  true,  to  know  what  is  good,  and  more  in- 
capable of  participation  in  the  work  of  God.  The 
newspaper  and  the  demagogue  are  our  servants; 
they  are  what  we  make  them;  that  the  best  of 
them  fail  to  obtain  support,  that  the  majority  of 
them  are  what  they  are,  is  incontrovertible  proof 
of  the  anaemic  nature  of  our  Christianity.  Hero- 
ism of  Christian  purpose  requires  us  to  refuse  to 
support  and  refuse  to  applaud  the  half-truths  and 
invective  that  we  are  most  ready,  by  our  training 


chap,  in      THE   FIGHTING   SPIRIT  325 

and  prejudices,  to  enjoy.  Do  we  think  that  life 
would  be  impossible  and  intolerable  without  it  ? 
that  the  State  would  fail  and  the  Church  crumble  ? 
Just  so  did  the  leaders  in  Jerusalem  think  when 
they  said  that  if  Jesus  continued  to  live  the  Romans 
would  come  and  take  away  their  place  and  nation. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  SWORD  AND  THE  MUCKRAKE 

In  the  matter  of  international  war  the  question 
is  not  to  be  solved  in  the  present  state  of  affairs. 
Our  hope  is  that  in  a  better  state  of  affairs  that 
the  future  may  bring  a  solution  may  be  found; 
and  while  we  see  men  on  all  sides  shaking  their 
heads  and  calling  such  a  hope  a  poet's  dream, 
we  may  perhaps  show  that  it  is  not  an  unreason- 
able hope. 

If  we  go  back  some  thirty  years,  and  find  some 
intelligent  deliverance  upon  this  same  topic,  it 
will  enable  us  to  see  how  far  and  how  fast  public 
sentiment  has  travelled.  Take  Dr.  Mozley's 
sermon  on  war.1  No  man  could  be  more  clear- 
headed. He  finds  war  vindicated  first  by  the 
fact  that  patriotism  is  a  duty,  and  that  the  man 
who  has  a  conscientious  objection  to  fighting  is 
not  a  patriot.  This  last  statement  is  made  with 
the  assurance  with  which  it  is  now  echoed  only 
in  the  jingo  journals  and  the  schoolboy's  debating 
club.  Even  thinkers  who  advocate  disarmament 
are  not  now  accused  of  being  unpatriotic  because 

1  University  Sermons  by  Canon  Mozley,  Sermon  III. 
326 


ch.iv  THE  SWORD   AND  MUCKRAKE    327 

they  do  not  believe  in  war,  the  patriotism  of  the 
apostles  of  peace  having  been  amply  proved. 
Quite  recently  a  French  politician,  M.  Naquet, 
wrote  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  advocating  dis- 
armament for  France,  but  the  reviewers,  though 
they  called  him  an  'amiable  visionary,'  did  not 
suggest  any  want  of  patriotism.  Dr.  Mozley 
admits  that  Christianity  denounces  the  motives 
which  lead  to  war  —  rapacity,  selfish  ambition, 
tyranny,  and  vanity;  but  finds  its  second  vindi- 
cation in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  only  court  in  which 
the  disputes  of  nations  can  be  tried  and  decided  to 
the  satisfaction  of  both  combatants.  This  part 
of  the  sermon  is  as  clear  a  presentation  of  the  real 
difficulty  as  can  be  found;  but  when  he  proceeds 
to  say  that,  because  there  never  has  been  an  in- 
ternational tribunal  to  which  all  nations  will 
defer,  there  never  will  be  such  a  court,  we  realise 
that  he  is  writing  in  the  latest  decade  in  which 
a  thinker  could  take  it  for  granted  that  the  future 
must  be  like  the  past.  The  dynamite  of  the 
theory  of  evolution  had  already  blown  up  such  a 
position  with  regard  to  the  future  in  every  strong- 
hold but  that  of  morality  and  religion;  a  few 
years  later,  and  the  power  of  the  idea,  which 
opened  the  future  to  unlimited  hope,  had  found 
a  place  in  the  religious  mind,  and  no  man  could 
henceforth  stand  in  a  scholastic  pulpit  and  measure 
the  possibilities  of  the  future  by  the  past.  The 
next  argument  is  still  more  antiquated,  viz.,  that 
war  must  have  been  accepted  by  Jesus  as  a  neces- 
sity because  it  was  a  part  of  the  regime  of  his  time 
and  he  says  nothing  against  it !     Slavery,  trial  by 


328    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

torture,  imprisonment  of  debtors  for  life  in  vile 
dungeons,  barbarous  forms  of  executing  criminals, 
such  as  stoning  and  crucifixion,  arbitrary  govern- 
ment, and  that  abomination  which  has  degraded 
every  Eastern  nation,  the  farming  of  taxes  —  all 
these  have  the  same  tacit  permission  to  exist !  The 
new  life  which  Jesus  brought  into  the  world  was 
the  axe  which  was  laid  to  the  root  of  those  trees; 
as  they  are  cut  at  the  root  by  the  development 
of  the  Christian  life,  so  one  by  one  in  process  of 
time  they  wither  away.     This  we  all  admit. 

If  in  a  quarter  of  a  century  such  a  change  has 
come  over  the  mind  of  the  religious  world  as 
makes  this  sermon  sound  like  a  mere  echo  of  the 
past,  if  the  necessity  for  war  does  not  appear  to 
be  so  well  established  in  the  minds  of  men  as  it 
was  but  a  few  decades  ago,  we  must  acknowledge 
these  are  hopeful  indications.  We  do  not  need 
the  calling  of  meetings,  or  much  talking,  or  letters 
in  the  newspapers;  still  less  do  we  want  the  or- 
ganisation of  new  societies.  These  may  have 
their  place,  but  they  are  not  essential.  Each  of 
us  must  be  resolute  to  form  in  his  own  heart  a 
purpose  strong  enough  to  mould  his  own  life; 
it  is  the  only  way  of  obtaining  a  corporate  purpose 
strong  enough  to  mould  the  world. 

We  hear  of  the  men  of  high  ideals  who  in  the 
past  put  their  best  workmanship  into  the  churches 
and  cathedrals  they  erected  to  the  glory  of  God, 
and  sometimes  people  sigh  pensively  as  if  the  age 
of  this  virtue  were  past.  We  are  right  in  feeling 
that  the  house  that  we  build  for  the  Lord  must 
be  "exceeding  magnifical,"  but  it  is  a  living  house, 


ch.  iv   THE  SWORD  AND  MUCKRAKE    329 

built  of  thought  and  feeling,  purpose  and  restraint, 
such  as,  being  handed  on  to  the  men  of  the  future, 
will  make  their  lives  more  beautiful  and  more 
instinct  with  the  life  of  God.  And  the  walls  of 
this  living  house  are  not,  can  never  be,  marred 
by  the  hideous  thoughts  and  emotions  born  of 
partisan  misrepresentations  and  national  animos- 
ities. These,  should  they  touch  the  house,  must  be 
burned  by  the  inexorable  fire  of  Love,  who  is  the 
master-builder. 

As  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  deterred  from 
realising  the  kingdom  of  love  on  earth  by  the 
difficulty  of  imagining  how  the  governments  of 
earth  can  become  inoffensive  and  forgiving  toward 
one  another,  so  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  deterred 
from  living  the  careless,  disinterested  life  of  the 
kingdom  by  our  inability  to  arrange  the  commerce 
of  the  world  on  any  other  principle  than  that  each 
work  to  obtain  the  greatest  material  advantage 
for  himself.  We  do  not,  indeed,  see  how  to 
arrange  the  trade  of  our  own  town,  or  even  our 
neighbours'  business,  upon  the  lines  laid  down 
by  Jesus.  But,  after  all,  that  is  not  what  we  are 
asked  to  do.  It  is  not  our  theories  but  our  life 
that  Jesus  offers  to  inspire  with  wisdom  and 
power;  nor  is  it  even  the  life  of  to-morrow,  but 
simply  the  life  of  to-day,  which  he  offers  to  in- 
spire. It  is  ours  thus  to  obey,  and  to  die  if  need 
be,  trusting  to  God,  whose  universal  laws  in  their 
working  take  account  of  every  individual  fact,  and 
give  it  its  due  influence  in  the  final  result.  The 
laws  of  social  life,  the  facts  of  history,  both  tell 
us  that  if  any  number  of  men  in  a  community 


330    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  iv 

set  themselves  to  think  and  to  work  by  some  new 
plan  or  dynamic  idea,  the  future  of  that  community 
is  not  the  same  as  its  past.  The  commerce  of 
the  world  to-day  is  more  capable  of  moderation 
and  improvement  because  of  every  truly  disinter- 
ested life  which  has  been  lived;  and  it  is  by  the 
power  of  such  lives  that  communities  are  so 
changed  that  what  appeared  impossible  to  one 
generation  becomes,  to  a  future  generation,  a 
necessity  of  thought  and  action. 

History  shows  that,  within  what  we  call  Chris- 
tian civilisation,  the  nature  of  business  trans- 
actions between  men  has  undergone  changes  which 
would  have  defied  any  human  forecast,  and 
certainly  tend  to  a  more  equal  distribution  of 
opportunity  than  did  earlier  customs.  In  the 
Middle  Ages,  to  trust  your  neighbour  with  your 
money  that  he  might  trade  with  it  if  you  could 
not,  and  so  make  a  profit  both  for  himself  and 
you,  was  a  thing  unknown.  The  man  who  had 
money,  if  he  could  not  himself  employ  it,  hid  it, 
often  in  the  ground,  where  it  could  benefit  no 
one.  The  constant  local  warfare,  the  lack  of 
any  broad  basis  of  trust  between  city  and  city 
and  nation  and  nation,  made  hoarding  the  only 
method  of  storing  wealth.  There  being  no  legiti- 
mate use  for  borrowed  capital,  the  honest  man 
never  borrowed.  The  spendthrift  was  the  only 
borrower,  and  the  risk  attending  the  transaction 
compelled  the  lender  to  charge  a  high  rate  of 
interest,  which  brought  him  and  his  trade  into 
sometimes  undeserved  contempt.  How  impos- 
sible would  it  have  been  for  a  man  of  that  age 


ch.  iv   THE  SWORD  AND  MUCKRAKE    331 

to  conceive  of  a  time  when  lending  and  borrowing 
would  be,  not  merely  legitimate,  but  essential  to 
the  welfare  of  the  community  !  A  complexity  of 
causes  brought  about  our  complex  modern  credit 
system;  a  system  under  which,  on  the  whole,  the 
covetous  life  is  productive  of  more  widespread 
harm,  while  a  liberal  life  can  be  lived  more  liberally, 
with  wider  results  for  good,  and  also  reproduce 
itself  in  more  widespread  benevolence.  All  that 
is  pointed  out  here  is  that  so  great  a  change  proves 
that  progress  is  possible  in  what  seem  the  most 
settled  ways  of  men. 

All  that  is  good  in  modern  business  conditions 
must  have  come  about  by  the  action  of  the  Divine 
Mind  upon  the  corporate  mind  of  man,  working 
especially  through  those  who  had  the  laws  of  fair 
dealing  at  heart.  If,  then,  men  in  business  life 
should  begin  more  and  more  to  set  their  hearts  upon 
endowing  the  world  with  such  new  commercial 
standards  as  shall  make  the  acquisition  of  super- 
fluous wealth  a  dishonour  rather  than  an  honour, 
and  all  sharp  dealing  as  much  to  be  abhorred  as 
is  usury  now,  there  is  every  reason  to  expect  a 
greater  difference  between  the  commercial  stand- 
ards of  to-day  and  those  of  a  future  century 
than  obtains  between  the  present  and  the  past. 
Such  pioneers  would  undoubtedly  meet  with  com- 
mercial persecution,  and  many  would  need  to 
face  the  loss  of  all  and  the  worse  sorrow  of  involv- 
ing those  who  have  trusted  them.  But  if  the 
Christian  hope  be  true,  the  right  would  gradually 
prevail  in  the  very  market-place,  and  on  the 
exchange    the    worship    of    Mammon    would    be 


332    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

dethroned.  Money  would  become  a  blessing 
rather  than  a  curse,  because  the  love  of  money 
would  have  ceased  to  dominate  the  commercial 
mind,  and  the  command  against  covetousness 
would  be  reverenced  amongst  all  good  men  as 
the  command  against  stealing  now  is.  Nothing 
less  than  this  can  be  the  Christian's  hope;  but 
it  will  not  be  attained  easily,  not  by  mere  hoping 
or  pious  aspiration.  It  will  need  men  in  increas- 
ing numbers  increasingly  set  on  carrying  the 
purpose  of  Jesus  into  every  form  of  commerce, 
and  ceaselessly  presenting  the  desire  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  God's  will  on  earth.  It  is  in 
such  matters  as  this  that  the  parable  of  the  unjust 
judge  is  the  stay  of  those  who  have  the  welfare 
of  the  kingdom  at  heart. 

The  path  does  not  open  very  far  to  our  sight; 
but  there  can  be  no  question  that  there  is  a  treas- 
ure of  heaven  hid  in  the  field  of  human  com- 
merce, and  it  is  only  by  selling  all  that  we  have 
that  we  shall  be  able  to  gain  it.  It  is  not  ours  to 
dogmatise,  yet,  among  the  forecasts  of  those  who 
try  to  think  how  the  commercial  world  is  to  be- 
come the  kingdom  of  our  Lord,  the  extreme 
Socialists  seem  to  be  trying  to  take  a  shorter  cut 
to  the  end  than  is  the  way  of  Jesus.  Total  ab- 
stinence from  any  element  in  life  not  in  itself  a 
vice,  unless  it  be  as  a  temporary  and  personal 
expedient,  seems  to  be  a  broad  rather  than  a 
narrow  road.  Once  entered  upon,  it  is  easy, 
fatally  easy;  it  ignores  some  factor  of  life,  instead 
of  moulding  it  to  its  purpose.  If  men  are  to 
abstain    wholly    from    personal    possessions    it    is 


CH.   IV 


THE   SWORD   AND   MUCKRAKE   333 


difficult  to  see  how  they  can  carry  out  the  many- 
sided  activities  of  the  Christian  ideal.  If,  for 
example,  a  man's  earthly  welfare  is  secured  by  the 
laws  of  the  community,  how  can  he  exercise  the 
virtue  of  taking  no  thought  for  the  morrow  ? 
What  faith  is  required  to  trust  God  for  food  and 
raiment  ?  How  can  he  give  away  all  that  he 
possesses  ?  How,  if  his  portion  of  goods,  and  that 
of  everybody  else,  is  measured,  can  he  give,  or 
take,  the  overflowing  measure  which  one  neigh- 
bour ought  to  give  into  the  bosom  of  another  ? 

It  is  commonly  said  that  children  brought  up 
in  some  dependent  position,  having  no  possessions 
or  privileges  of  their  own  to  give  away,  are  lack- 
ing in  the  capacity  for  gratitude.  Further  in- 
vestigation on  this  point  is  most  desirable.  If 
gratitude,  the  choicest  flower  of  the  soul,  only 
blooms  in  the  atmosphere  of  possession,  rooted  in 
generosity  rather  than  in  receptivity,  it  would 
seem  that  to  deprive  man  of  the  control  of  pos- 
sessions, even  though  it  be  to  promote  his  material 
and  intellectual  welfare,  may  be  to  tamper  with 
the  very  source  of  his  highest  life. 

Whether  Socialism  be  a  mistake  or  not,  it  is 
probably  one  of  those  phases  through  which  we 
shall  go  to  the  perfect  life.  History  has  shown 
that  many  things  "must  needs  come"  and  pass 
away.  There  is,  in  the  evolution  of  mankind, 
apart  from  the  life  of  the  kingdom,  something 
swinging  to  and  fro,  like  a  vast  pendulum  in  the 
clock  of  the  ages,  brushing  aside  first  one  class  of 
men  and  then  another  with  some  appearance  of 
secular  justice.     The  priest  for  generations  tyran- 


334    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

nises  over  the  people,  and  the  age  comes  when 
the  people  tyrannise  over  the  priest.  The  class 
tyrannises  over  the  mass,  and  in  turn  the  mass 
tyrannises  over  the  class.  The  sword  has  emptied 
the  purse;  the  purse  will  sheathe  the  sword  in  rust. 
Capital  has  abused  its  power;  labour  is  scarcely 
a  human  factor  if  it  does  not  take  its  turn  of 
privilege  and  abuse  of  privilege.  When  the  great 
swing  of  the  clock  of  time  pushes  us  to  the  wall 
it  is  useless  to  get  angry,  still  more  useless  to 
whine.  The  punishments  will  fall  hardest  on  the 
innocent,  but  the  brave  will  learn  the  lessons  they 
teach. 

There  is  always  the  refuge  of  the  yoke  of  God, 
the  "more  excellent  way"  which  St.  Paul  found 
so  good,  the  way  of  giving  up  place  and  power 
and  riches  for  Jesus'  sake  before  they  are  taken 
from  us.  At  the  same  time,  it  cannot  be  argued 
that  Jesus  taught  that  a  man  should  not  have 
possessions,  for,  although  he  told  one  rich  man 
to  give  away  all  that  he  had,  to  another,  who 
said  to  him,  "The  half  of  my  goods  I  give  to  the 
poor,"  he  replied,  "This  day  is  salvation  come  to 
thy  house." 


CHAPTER   V 

THE    PROTESTANTISM   OF   JESUS  1 

Jesus  undoubtedly  taught  that  men  prone  to  sins 
of  the  lower  nature,  as  violence  and  covetousness, 
were  not  so  degraded  or  so  hardened  against  his 
salvation  as  those  —  "perverse  and  stiff-necked" 
—  who  obstinately  adhered  to  outworn  religious 
beliefs.  "Moses  we  know,  but  this  man  we  do 
not  know,"  expresses  a  sin  of  the  spiritual  nature 
that  left  those  who  entrenched  themselves  in  it  a 
prey  to  deadly  spiritual  forces  from  which  Jesus 
could  not  save  them.  But  let  us  first  be  clear  as 
to  what  quality  it  is  that  Jesus  describes  as  being 
perverse  and  deadly.  It  is  not  the  humble  caution 
which  will  beware  of  false  teachers:  to  that  he 
urges  his  servants,  and  he  gives  them  a  test.  The 
test  is  the  good  life  of  the  teacher  and  the  good 
fruits  of  the  doctrine;  and  this  test  must  be 
somewhat  rigorously  applied,  for  caution  is  not  to 
be  put  off  its  guard  by  the  mere  appearance  of 
goodness  in  a  would-be  reformer.  This  caution 
and  this  test  are,  however,  markedly  different  from 

1  Much  of  this  chapter  was  embodied  in  an  article  in  the 

Monthly  Review,  May,  1 901. 

335 


336    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

the  spirit  which  rejects  the  noblest  life  and  the 
best  ethical  results  of  any  body  of  teaching  simply 
because  that  teaching  does  not  tally  with  the 
authority  of  the  past. 

It  is  this  spirit  against  which  the  wave  of  every 
successive  reformation  must  break,  and  the  fact 
that  this  deadly  spiritual  sin  is  a  permanent  ele- 
ment in  the  religious  nature  leads  us  to  suppose 
that  the  protest  against  it  involved  in  every  re- 
formation must  be  a  permanent  need  in  the 
Church.  The  attitude  of  mind  engendered  by  it 
is  the  most  unfavourable  to  any  real  revival  or 
reformation  of  religion.  How  does  any  true 
reformation  begin  ?  At  first  like  some  half-guilty 
doubt,  like  a  thief  in  the  night,  some  clearer  under- 
standing of  the  Christ  steals  into  one  watchful, 
yielding  heart  after  another,  until  the  fleet  light 
flashes  over  all.  The  recurring  prophecy  Jesus 
made  of  that  coming  of  his  which  would  discover 
his  servants  unprepared,  unfit  to  receive  him  and 
inevitably  degraded  by  that  unfitness,  probably 
refers  to  these  hours  of  glorious  opportunity.  Such 
an  opportunity  was  his  earthly  life,  and  it  be- 
hoves us  to  learn  from  that  what  the  protest  of 
each  successive  reformation  ought  to  be. 

The  argument  of  this  chapter  is  that  Jesus 
Christ  expressed  an  ideal  protestantism  which  must 
be  essential  to  the  perfection  of  the  Church;  that 
the  nature  of  right  protestantism,  as  distinguished 
from  wrong,  can  be  discovered  only  by  an  analysis 
of  his  attitude  toward  the  sins  and  errors  of  the 
religious  system  of  his  place  and  time. 

It  is  but  necessary  to  consider  the  Mishna,  or 


chap,  v    PROTESTANTISM   OF   JESUS     337 

any  sketch  of  its  contents,  to  see  how  soul-deaden- 
ing was  the  legalism  which  at  the  Christian  era 
entered  into  every  detail  of  the  action  of  the  devout 
Jew  of  the  Rabbinical  school.  The  very  fibre  of 
his  religious  performance  was  of  such  stuff  that  a 
revived  spiritual  impulse  could  not  long  make 
his  rule  of  life  its  expression.  The  observance 
of  the  Halakah,  the  traditional  law,  was  the  re- 
ligion of  all  pious  Jews.  It  has  been  a  popular 
idea  that  a  section  only,  and  they  false  religionists, 
devoted  themselves  to  legalism,  while  another 
section,  the  faithful  who  were  waiting  for  the 
consolation  of  Israel,  nourished  their  souls  only 
upon  psalm  and  prophecy;  but  this  is  not  true. 
All  religious  Jews  considered  tithings  and  puri- 
fications and  sabbatical  exactions  as  the  law 
of  God.  Deep  down  where  the  eye  of  God  alone 
sees  the  inner  man,  there  was,  no  doubt,  a  clear 
distinction  then,  as  in  the  Church  of  all  time, 
between  what  may  be  called  "the  faithful  remnant" 
—  the  pure  in  heart,  who  always  see  God  even 
through  the  utmost  formalism  —  and  those  who 
may  always  be  termed  religious  actors  (vTroKpiTai), 
because  they  are  absorbed  in  accomplishments. 
But  as  far  as  Judaism  might  be  seen  outwardly, 
it  was  technical  and  gross;  and  if  some  humble 
souls  laid  the  greater  stress  upon  the  inspired 
utterances  of  their  religious  poets,  the  flower  of 
the  nation  —  its  strength,  its  youth,  its  learning  — 
sat  in  the  higher  Rabbinical  schools,  where  the 
precepts  of  a  literal  law  were  painfully  analysed 
and  split  into  more  and  more  shocking  puerilities. 
Perhaps  the  most  accessible  information  concern- 


338    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  iv 

ing  this  religion  is  in  Edersheim's  Life  and  Times 
of  Jesus.  In  vol.  i.  chap,  viii.,  we  read:  "The 
Halakah  indicated,  with  the  most  minute  and 
painful  punctiliousness,  every  legal  ordinance  as 
to  outward  observances,  and  it  explained  every 
bearing  of  the  law  of  Moses,  but  beyond  this  it 
left  the  inner  man,  the  spring  of  actions,  untouched. 
What  he  was  to  believe,  and  what  to  feel,  was 
chiefly  matter  of  the  Haggadah."  Edersheim 
explains  that  the  Halakah  was  considered  of 
supreme  importance.  Then  he  adds :  "  He  (Jesus) 
left  the  Halakah  untouched,  putting  it,  as  it 
were,  on  one  side;"  and  again:  "Except  when 
forced  to  comment  upon  some  outstanding  detail, 
he  left  the  traditional  law  untouched." 

Let  us  be  quite  clear  about  this.  Jesus  pro- 
tested against  certain  external  actions  of  religious 
Jews.  These  were  not  enjoined  by  the  tradition, 
and  were  condemned  by  the  more  thoughtful 
leaders  of  the  legalising  party  themselves.  The 
Pharisaic  conscience  was  already  vaguely  feeling 
for  definition  of  precisely  those  vices  which  he, 
graciously  blowing  upon  its  smoking  flax,  made 
vividly  clear.  They  had  already  feebly  protested 
against  the  taking  of  oaths;  they  had  said  some- 
thing in  favour  of  secret  alms;  they  had  spoken 
of  those  among  them  who  made  a  public  nuisance 
of  their  piety  as  the  plague  of  their  sect,  and  it 
goes  without  saying  that  both  priests  and  Rabbis 
knew  the  illegality  of  the  traffic  in  the  temple 
from  which  the  former  reaped  so  rich  an  income. 
Now,  as  to  the  extremists,  "the  plague  of  their 
sect,"  it  may  be  remarked  that  there  are  in  every 


chap,  v    PROTESTANTISM  OF   JESUS      339 

section  of  the  Church  at  all  times  men  who,  under 
the  influence  of  the  religious  idea,  perform  deeds 
which  to  better-balanced  minds,  who  hold  the 
same  doctrine,  appear  obviously  wrong.  Such 
men  usually  make  stock-in-trade  of  some  sort  out 
of  their  sensationalism,  and  yet  would  shrink  in 
penitence  from  their  selfish  motives  if  they  were 
capable  of  self-analysis.  In  truest  kindness  to  the 
fanatics  themselves,  Jesus  held  up  such  motives 
to  the  light;  such  actions  in  tenderness  for  their 
groping  conscience  he  denounced.  It  is  also  very 
noteworthy  that  the  most  objectionable  usages 
were  condemned,  not  for  what  they  were  out- 
wardly, nor  for  the  doctrines  they  involved,  but 
because  of  their  motive.  Thus  the  chief  criticism 
which  Jesus  made  of  religious  customs  fell  under 
the  second  division  of  Jewish  doctrine;  it  was 
Haggadic;  in  which  province  even  the  most  rigid 
sect  of  the  Jews  allowed  large  option  of  theory. 
This  criticism  is  mingled  with  most  earnest  ex- 
hortations not  to  break  with  the  existing  law,  but 
to  add  to  it  holiest  motive,  and  with  commands 
not  to  judge  others,  to  beware  whom  we  accept 
as  religious  reformers,  making  a  good  life  the  test, 
to  be  more  careful  to  clear  our  own  vision  than 
that  of  our  neighbour,  to  treat  others  as  we  would 
wish  to  be  treated,  and  not  to  be  blatant  concern- 
ing our  sacred  things. 

Thus  this  polemic  of  Jesus  displays  three  char- 
acteristics. First,  he  upbraids  only  in  harmony 
with  the  conscience  of  the  party  he  criticises; 
secondly,  his  criticism  refers  to  motive,  so  that  it 
contradicts  as  little  as  may  be  the  sacredness  of 


340    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

their  code;  and  thirdly,  he  upholds  the  authority 
both  of  code  and  codifier,  conserving  for  the 
moment  the  very  law  that  he  knows  his  teaching 
must  eventually  supplant.  We  shall  see  that 
these  same  features  characterise  his  protestantism 
to  the  end. 

Toward  the  end,  knowing  that  his  word  cannot 
then  save  Judaism  from  dying  in  its  sin,  he  again 
lifts  up  his  voice  against  their  customs.  But  again 
he  gives  the  command  to  practise  and  lay  to 
heart  all  that  the  existing  authorities  teach,  and 
again  shows  that  their  teaching  is  not  to  be  scorned 
but  to  be  improved  upon  in  motive  and  in  heart- 
felt performance;  and  when  he  laments  the  woes 
that  will  certainly  befall  the  devotees  of  a  mis- 
taken religious  zeal,  and  points  out  the  faults 
which  will  be  the  causes  of  these  calamities,  it  is 
evident  that  the  accusations  brought  against  the 
leaders  of  the  stricter  party  in  the  Jewish  Church 
are  such  as  would  have  tended,  if  heeded,  to 
purify  that  party  rather  than  to  break  it  up.  He 
again  accuses  them  of  being  artificial;  and  to  this 
is  added  the  charge  of  spiritual  pride  and  the 
zeal  that  springs  from  it,  the  exaltation  of  small 
distinctions  and  duties  to  the  loss  of  the  great 
principles  of  goodness,  care  for  the  external  life 
where  the  springs  of  motives  are  false,  and,  last 
and  worst,  the  devotion  to  dead  teachers  while 
those  who  are  inspired  with  the  living  truth  which 
makes  for  growth  are  stoned.  These  warnings 
can  be  launched  effectively  against  many  workers 
in  any  section  of  the  Church;  they  are,  in  fact, 
taken  severally  and  each  set  forth  in  its  different 


chap,  v   PROTESTANTISM   OF   JESUS       341 

aspects,  the  burden  of  warning  breathed  by  every 
faithful  Christian  shepherd  to  his  flock.  Jesus 
first  grouped  them  all  together  with  consummate 
skill,  which  displays  what  we  call  his  religious 
genius;  and  the  fact  that  he  was  manifested 
at  the  moment  when  the  faults  of  the  Church  had 
donned  their  most  concrete  dress  proves,  if  we 
believe  in  a  divine  plan  for  the  religious  devel- 
opment of  the  race,  that  it  was  of  first  impor- 
tance that  true  religion  should  be  exhibited  as 
at  enmity  with  the  most  natural  faults  of  the  re- 
ligious. But  it  is  impossible  for  any  one  con- 
versant with  the  state  of  Jewish  thought  at  the 
time  to  suppose  that  Jesus  intended  to  dispute  the 
general  authority  of  the  Judaic  tradition  for  the 
Jews  of  that  generation.  Against  the  supposed 
righteousness  of  the  Rabbinic  Halakoth,  which 
embodied  a  most  degrading  mistake  as  to  what 
constituted  obedience  to  the  God  of  life  and  love 
—  concerning  that  Jesus  says  very  little.  Eder- 
sheim  says,  "The  worst  blow  he  dealt  it  was  that 
of  neglect." 

When  all  polemic  was  over,  when  Jesus  ad- 
mitted that  his  message  to  Judaism  as  a  Church 
had  been  rejected,  what  did  he  do  ?  Did  he 
oppose  himself  openly  to  it,  and  in  his  last  hours 
with  his  followers  commission  them  to  break  with 
it  ?  We  have  no  indication  of  such  a  spirit  on 
his  part,  and  clear  evidence  to  the  contrary. 
There  is  no  record  that  the  infant  Church,  even 
when  under  the  fullest  inspiration  of  the  descend- 
ing Spirit,  conceived  of  itself  as  standing  upon 
the   ruins  of  Judaism.     In  this  vital  period  the 


342    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

Church  exemplifies  much  that  we  ought  to  repeat, 
but  of  iconoclasm,  of  the  spirit  that  strikes  at 
traditional  authority,  there  is  not  the  slightest 
trace.  Even  the  leader  of  the  apostles,  the  orator 
of  Pentecost,  had  no  conception  that  he  was  at 
liberty  to  neglect  Judaic  restrictions,  or  welcome 
to  Christian  fellowship  those  who  remained 
in  the  environment  of  other  customs.  It  needed 
vision  and  voice  from  heaven  repeated  three  times 
to  introduce  these  ideas;  and  when  introduced, 
long  and  painful  controversies  only  developed 
them  slowly. 

Such,  then,  was  the  character  of  the  protestant 
teaching  of  Jesus;  and  this  protest  was  the  push- 
ing of  the  large  divine  goodness  against  the  nar- 
rowness of  man's  religion.  The  existing  Church 
said,  "Obey  the  letter."  He  replied,  by  precept 
and  life,  "The  letter  killeth;"  and  this  phrase 
really  sums  up  the  whole  of  his  opposition.  The 
protestantism  of  Jesus  was  only  a  small,  though 
essential,  part  of  his  message.  The  larger  share 
of  his  time  was  given  to  preaching  that  "the 
Spirit  giveth  life,"  and  the  effect  of  his  protes- 
tantism can  only  be  fully  understood  when  con- 
sidered as  a  part  of  the  total  effect  of  his  whole 
teaching,  as  in  the  case  of  any  other  reformer. 
Two  things  only  as  regards  this  completer  view 
can  here  be  noted  —  that  the  extreme  temperance 
of  his  protestantism  left  the  more  room  for  his 
constructive  work,  and  that  the  substance  of  that 
constructive  work  consisted  in  truths  which,  al- 
though they  must  eventually  break  up  a  dead 
letter,   were   on   such   a   different   level   that   they 


chap,  v   PROTESTANTISM   OF    JESUS       343 

did  not  obviously  clash  with  it.  He  hid  in  the 
heart  of  Judaism  a  life  principle  which  must 
ultimately  break  the  shell  not  only  of  its  for- 
mulae but  of  all  successive  formulae  as  they  are 
outgrown. 

The  result  of  the  temperate  protestantism  of 
Jesus  as  applied  to  the  very  unfavourable  con- 
dition of  the  existing  Church  was  that  the  schism, 
when  it  came,  seems  actually  to  have  divided 
between  the  wheat  and  the  chaff,  the  fruit-bearing 
and  the  dead  trees,  the  sheep  and  the  goats;  this 
cannot  be  said  of  any  reformation  since.  The 
Jewish  Church,  which  persisted  in  antagonism  to 
Christianity  after  the  second  century,  exhibited  no 
principle  of  self-development,  which  is  the  test  of 
life. 

The  form  of  Christianity  resembled  the  form  of 
Judaism  very  closely  at  first,  and  changed  from  it 
very  gradually.  The  new  was  added  to  the  old  — 
that  was  all,  to  begin  with.  The  very  apostle  who 
was  fighting  to  gain  for  the  Gentiles  the  same 
freedom  to  exercise  their  Christian  faith  with  as 
little  change  of  external  custom  as  might  be,  took 
upon  himself  a  Pharisaic  vow  in  the  precincts 
of  the  daily  sacrifice.  Had  the  spirit  of  the  Church 
remained  true  in  all  its  progress  to  the  example  of 
the  divine  reformer,  we  believe  that  all  such  forms 
of  Judaism  and  heathenism  as  were  not  desirable 
would  have  slowly  and  gently  separated  themselves 
and  disappeared,  as  the  sere  blossom  falls  when  the 
fruit  is  formed.  Instead  of  this,  how  has  the 
spirit  of  Judaism,  as  in  this  matter  it  contrasts 
with  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  triumphed  !     The 


344    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

persecution  which  Jesus  foretold  was  perhaps  as 
much  the  result  of  the  evil  principle  within  the 
Church  as  of  the  evil  principle  without  her.  It  is 
of  the  very  essence  of  Judaic  law  to  believe  that 
it  is  possible  to  translate  God's  truth  so  literally 
into  human  forms  or  formulae  that  the  converse  of 
those  formulae  must  be  false,  and  therefore  that 
God  is  to  be  served  by  the  sword  of  controversy. 
Let  us  consider,  by  way  of  example  and  con- 
trast, the  Reformation  of  Luther.  If  he  upon  his 
awakening  had  said,  "Calamity  will  certainly  come 
upon  you,  ye  saints  of  the  Church,  who  sell  for 
money  the  remission  of  sin's  punishment,"  he 
would  have  carried  with  him  the  great  body  of 
the  sober  religious  of  that  time.  They  did  not, 
of  course,  approve  of  the  brutal  sale  of  indulgences 
any  more  than  did  Luther,  and  the  closest  analogy 
may  be  observed  between  them  and  the  pious 
adherents  of  Judaism  in  the  time  of  Christ.  It 
was  that  which  mediaeval  saints  did  soberly  believe 
concerning  the  rights  vested  in  a  visible  authority 
which  made  Tetzel  possible;  and  without  their 
genuine  goodness,  their  tears  of  true  contrition, 
their  true  self-denials  and  holy  motives,  the  abuses 
of  such  as  Tetzel,  and  indeed  every  abuse  that  the 
great  Church  harboured,  would  have  been  harm- 
less, for  men  are  too  literally  made  in  the  image  of 
truth  to  lie  long  in  the  toils  of  an  unmixed  wrong. 
Had  Luther  gone  on  to  take  every  abuse  toward 
which  the  conscience  of  the  saints  of  the  Church 
was  pointing,  were  it  ever  so  feebly,  and  to  charge 
it  upon  the  whole  Church  with  bitter  cries  of  woe, 
his  protest  would  gradually  have  carried  all  true 


chap.v    PROTESTANTISM   OF   JESUS       345 

souls  with  him.  They  would  have  been  the  last 
to  disclaim  their  responsibility.  Rising  in  the 
might  of  true  goodness  that  depends  upon  God, 
they  would  have  responded  to  his  call,  and  so  he 
would  have  purged  the  temple.  Internecine  war 
there  might  probably  have  been;  the  chaff  sep- 
arated from  the  grain  by  the  winnowing  fan 
might  have  eddied  and  darkened  the  air;  but 
our  point  is  that  the  fan  in  that  case  would  ac- 
tually have  divided  between  those  who  chose  the 
grace  of  God  and  those  who  preferred  the  disgrace 
of  the  carnal  mind.  Anything  that  might  have 
been  left  when  a  true  reformation  had  been  accom- 
plished, would  have  been  as  dead  spiritually  as  was 
Judaism  when  Christianity  had  finally  emerged 
and  separated  from  it  —  an  ashen  crust  to  show 
where  fire  had  been,  a  shell  from  which  wings 
had  taken  flight,  a  sloughed-off  skin.  The  true 
Church  would  have  gone  on  in  its  continuous  life 
to  fresh  conquests  of  new  truths.  That  victory, 
once  won,  would  have  been  won  for  ever. 

Is  it  not  clear  that  Luther's  attempt  to  define 
what  he  supposed  to  be  the  converse  of  the  spiritual 
truth  which  God  had  given  him,  and  his  determina- 
tion to  impose  this  definition  upon  the  Church, 
resulted  in  this,  that  when  Christendom  was  split 
by  the  wedge  against  which  he  was  heaving  such 
heroic  blows,  the  line  of  cleavage  ran  not  between 
good  and  evil,  saint  and  sinner,  but  divided  the 
army  of  the  saints  pretty  equally  into  two  halves  ? 
And  thus  the  truth,  which  is  always  first  concrete, 
a  life  —  a  word  only  in  so  far  as  word  can  be  lived 
—  was  divided  also;    and  God  could  not  be  God 


346    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS 

and  give  the  moral  victory  to  either  party;  the 
wound  could  not  "heal  with  the  first  intention,,, 
nay,  could  be  nothing  but  a  running  sore  of  battle. 
Error !  If  it  was  an  error  to  conceive  of  God's 
wrath  as  being  appeased  by  money  given  to  the 
Church,  we  can  at  least  conceive  such  action  as 
being  an  expression,  if  a  mistaken  one,  of  true 
contrition;  whereas  we  should  be  indeed  lost  to 
Christian  sentiment  if  we  could  find  the  expres- 
sion of  any  God-given  emotion  in  the  rule  for  the 
highest  degree  of  Pharisaic  punctiliousness.  Or 
again,  what  could  be  the  error  of  calling  the 
motherly  element  in  the  divine  nature  by  the 
name  of  Mary  as  compared  with  the  error  of 
conceiving  the  Almighty  as  wholly  material,  as 
himself  performing  ablutions  and  wearing  phylac- 
teries, as  causing  the  counsels  of  Heaven  to  wait 
on  the  decisions  of  an  earthly  Sanhedrim  ?  If 
it  was  a  crime  of  the  Church  to  essay  the  per- 
suasion of  heretics  by  fire  and  sword,  how  much 
worse  and  more  material  was  the  —  to  us  — 
fiendish  desire  of  the  pious  Jew  to  sweep  the 
nations  before  him  from  the  face  of  earth  and 
hope  of  heaven,  and  feast  for  ever  in  celebra- 
tion of  their  doom !  If  monastic  vows  made 
division  between  nature  and  holiness,  the  ideal  of 
life  and  worship  which  underlay  them  was  at  once 
more  pure  and  charitable  than  any  conception  of 
holiness  in  the  Jewish  Halakah.  Among  fighting 
men  there  is  perhaps  none  much  greater  than 
Luther,  yet  we  cannot  suppose  that  Jesus,  who 
left  the  whole  false  fabric  of  Judaic  thought  and 
practice  to  perish  by  its  own  natural  decay,  would 


chap,  v   PROTESTANTISM   OF   JESUS      347 

under  any  provocation  have  struck,  as  at  last  did 
Luther,  at  the  authority  to  which  all  Christendom 
then  bowed,  subjecting  to  a  to-morrow  of  anarchy 
millions  of  sheep  who  could  not  as  yet  comprehend 
the  call  of  a  new  shepherd.  Jesus  would  surely 
have  denounced,  as  did  Luther,  the  corruptions  of 
the  Papal  Court,  which  every  honest  Papist  bitterly 
deplored;  would  have  spoken  out  more  strongly 
than  did  Luther  or  Erasmus,  of  enforced  vows  and 
the  utter  shame  of  selling,  not  only  spiritual  gifts, 
but  mere  legal  justice,  to  the  highest  bidder;  but 
he  could  not  have  been  less  tolerant  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical authority  of  that  day  than  he  was  of  that  of 
the  priests  and  teachers  of  his  own  time. 

The  positive  illumination  which  Luther  and  his 
followers  brought  to  the  Church  was  very  great. 
However  mistaken  they  may  have  been  in  their 
negations  and  destructive  policy,  their  word  con- 
cerning God's  immediate  fatherhood  for  the 
individual  soul,  his  personal  inspiration  in  it,  his 
fostering  care  of  its  truth,  was  a  most  true  echo  of 
our  Lord's  essential  doctrine,  an  application  of  it 
so  necessary  to  the  spiritual  growth  of  the  race 
that,  resounding  through  the  history  of  that  time, 
we  hear  the  music  of  the  promise,  "  Greater  things 
than  these  shall  ye  do." 

Let  us  mark  again,  for  it  cannot  be  said  too 
often,  that  the  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  the 
reformation  always  pertaining  to  her  true  life 
ought  to  be  that  of  an  open  mind,  heedful  only 
to  reject  the  immoral  or  insincere  in  thought,  and 
the  works  that  tend  to  oppose  the  tender  humanity 
of  Jesus.     Take  the  great  reformation  of  God's 


348    HIS    WAYS    AND    OUR    WAYS    book  iv 

truth  in  physical  science  in  the  last  century:  if 
the  Church,  seeing  the  high  endeavour  of  such 
inspired  men  as  Darwin  and  Huxley,  had  held 
open  her  mind  from  the  first  to  such  truth  as  they 
had  to  impart,  how  great  would  have  been  her 
gain  !  and  how  great,  too,  would  have  been  the 
gain  to  science  if  such  men  as  these  had  not  left 
the  field  of  their  own  rich  treasure  to  seek  to 
destroy  the  hidden  treasure  in  the  field  of  the 
Church  ! 

It  is  Jesus,  not  any  other  reformer,  who  is  our 
ideal.  The  true  heirs  of  his  gospel  are  those  who 
look  to  the  future  rather  than  to  the  past  for  the 
perfect  understanding  of  him;  who  are  able  to 
work  intensely,  by  prayer  and  by  such  form  of 
expression  as  is  given  to  them,  to  show  forth  the 
inexorable  quality  of  the  Christ-life.  Such  men 
are,  indeed,  the  true  successors  of  the  Jewish 
prophets,  of  the  apostles,  of  every  true  reformer 
within  the  Church  of  Rome,  in  the  ranks  of  his- 
toric protestantism,  or  nominally  outside  any 
branch  of  the  Church. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE    POWER   OF    HIS    DEATH 

The  declaration  of  the  gospel  is  this  —  that  God, 
who  is  life  as  manifested  in  love  and  joy,  gives 
himself  to  man  here  and  now,  in  and  by  Jesus 
Christ,  who  ever  receives,  ever  bestows,  what  he 
received,  what  he  bestowed,  in  his  brief  visible 
ministry. 

The  initial  difficulty  of  the  human  mind  in 
accepting  the  religion  of  Jesus  arises  from  the  fact 
that  it  seems  impossible  to  us  to  value  what  we 
would  possess  otherwise  than  by  its  cost  to  us. 
We  think  that  the  race  has  had  to  pay  for  all  its 
gains.  The  dregs  of  the  struggle  of  past  evolution 
are  in  our  thought,  and,  using  cost  as  our  measure 
—  the  very  opposite  of  God's  measure  —  we  place 
a  fictitious  value  on  all  things.  God  makes  a  free 
gift  of  the  best,  and  sets  a  price  only  on  the  worst : 
sin  he  permits  to  us  by  measure,  because  its  cost  is 
so  great.  Our  highest  measure  of  that  cost  is 
the  death  of  Jesus;  and  all  pain  and  sorrow 
wrought  by  the  Evil  Will  on  men  or  by  men,  all 
premature  death,  is  part  of  the  cost  —  God  himself 
suffering  in  all.  Life  and  love  and  power  God 
gives  without  measure;  it  is  his  great  joy  to  lavish 

349 


350      HIS  WAYS  AND  OUR  WAYS     book  iv 

them  on  all  who  hold  out  the  hand  of  faith.  Yet 
faith  itself  is  his  gift.  We  are  set  in  an  endless 
sequence;  we  receive  because  we  believe,  we  be- 
lieve because  we  have  received.  It  would  seem 
that  part  of  our  greatest  mistake  has  been  to  set  the 
simplest  and  lowest  of  God's  gifts  far  off  in  a 
region  of  miracle  and  heavenly  glory,  regarding 
them  as  the  results  of  the  faith  that  enters  the 
higher  life,  not  as  Jesus  gave  them  —  as  the  prep- 
aration for  that  faith.  To  receive  those  gifts 
which  fulfil  our  earthly  need  would  be  to  receive  a 
better  opportunity  to  believe  that  even  the  love  of 
Jesus  in  its  depth  will  animate  us.  Yet  the  gifts 
of  God  can  only  be  received  by  a  corporate  faith. 
One  man,  be  he  ever  so  faithful,  cannot  rise  above 
the  faith  of  the  race;  he  can  only  lift  it  higher. 
One  corporation,  be  it  ever  so  pure,  cannot  hear 
God's  voice  alone;  it  can  only  awaken  the  world 
and  teach  mankind  to  listen.  The  gifts  of  God 
are  not  to  man,  but  to  mankind.  The  Son  of 
Man  while  on  earth  only  received  from  God  what 
he  could  give  to  men.  The  saint  can  only  receive 
from  God  the  gifts  he  can  persuade  his  brothers  to 
receive  from  him.  According  to  the  Johannine 
Gospel  the  moral  necessity  for  the  departure  of 
Jesus  —  "It  is  needful  for  you  that  I  go  away"  — 
was  that  men  could  then  receive  no  more  from  him. 
The  lesson  of  his  love  to  men  in  forgiveness  unto 
death  was  necessary  before  they  could  begin  to 
assimilate  all  the  earthly  lesson  of  his  life.  Until 
mankind  believed  the  earthly  things  he  told  them, 
how  could  they  believe  the  heavenly  things  he 
should  afterwards  impart  by  his  Spirit  ? 


ch.  vi   THE   POWER    OF   HIS   DEATH     351 

We  see  him  on  earth  with  the  eyes  of  those 
who  loved  him  best.  His  court  is  so  royal  that 
the  kings  of  the  world  have  ever  craved  its  benefits 
in  vain.  He  offers  to  all  suitors,  as  the  first 
and  simplest  rites  of  hospitality,  the  pleasures  of 
health,  the  dignities  of  self-control.  To  those 
who  enter  his  banqueting-house  his  presence 
causes  the  life  that  is  past  to  seem  poor  and  dis- 
honourable—  its  best  as  well  as  its  worst;  but 
to  the  feast  he  spreads  is  added  the  appetite  to 
enjoy;  with  the  banquet  is  given  the  temperance 
that  blesses  its  delight.  He  sets  before  men  a 
standard  of  service,  material  and  spiritual,  more 
beautiful  than  any  other;  he  points  them  to  a 
spiritual  goal  farther  than  any  man  may  see,  and 
entrusts  to  them  his  great  enterprise.  He  lifts 
them  out  of  all  cause  of  depression;  forgives  their 
sins  freely;  and  offers  to  equip  them  with  strength 
that  will  make  their  service  jubilant.  All  his  gifts 
are  so  bountiful  that  there  is  no  limit  to  having 
except  lack  of  desire.  The  only  gifts  he  denies  are 
those  things  whose  value  consists  in  their  scarcity  — 
those  things  of  which,  if  one  man  has  more  another 
must  have  less,  and  of  which  if  all  had  plenty  none 
would  want  any.  They  are  of  so  sorry  a  nature 
that  they  produce  more  pain  than  pleasure,  the 
love  of  them  being  the  source  of  all  that  divides 
men,  causing  them  to  enslave  themselves  and 
offend  their  brothers  in  the  mean  ambition  to 
attain  a  trivial  and  transitory  good. 

Is  there  any  spiritual  joy  so  high  as  partnership 
with  the  Source  of  love,  a  share  in  God's  high 
emprise  ?  —  something  divine  to  do,  that  claims 


352     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS 

every  power  of  thought;  physical  nature  unob- 
served to  be  rightly  observed;  a  race  beloved  by 
God  to  be  won  from  the  enslaving  world-soul 
whose  breath  is  covetousness,  whose  gift  is  moral 
obliquity,  whose  reward  is  spiritual  death  ? 

Is  there  any  moral  pleasure  like  the  sense  of  self 
at  unity  —  a  unity  in  harmony  with  all  good  ?  We 
only  know  ourselves  in  anarchy,  and  cry,  "Happy 
are  those  who  do  not  know  —  who  yet  live  in  the 
outward  look,  or  govern  themselves  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  highest  part,  or  drift  only  suspecting  the 
horror  of  the  internal  strife  !"  But  to  know  one's 
self,  and  to  know  all  one's  powers  in  harmony,  not 
through  the  destruction  of  any  power  but  through 
the  common  guidance  of  all  —  that  were  a  salva- 
tion indeed  !  There  are  hours  in  which  we  have 
partly  attained  to  such  self-control;  it  is  only  by 
the  sum  of  such  hours  that  we  can  conceive  of  the 
volitional  salvation  which  Jesus  offers. 

Is  there  any  material  pleasure  to  compare 
with  the  pleasure  of  health  ?  We  have  so  far 
missed  the  mark  that  we  hardly  know;  but  there 
is  an  hour  in  the  spring-time  when  we  feel  the 
health  of  the  great  earth-mother  pulsing  in  us  to 
the  renewal  of  life;  there  are  moments  when 
every  organ  in  the  body  is  touched  into  harmony 
by  joy;  we  look  back  to  the  relish  of  childhood 
for  life,  and  by  the  sum  of  all  these  experiences  we 
may  try  to  grasp  the  bodily  joy  of  the  Christ's 
salvation. 

Thus  we  see  the  Christ  and  his  salvation  —  the 
gift  of  complete  joy,  of  which  our  faith  can  yet  only 
realise  a  small  part.     In  the  midst  of  this  gospel 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    353 

of  joy  is  set  the  death  of  Jesus,  no  mere  incident 
but  the  heart  and  crown  of  the  message  of  life. 
How  large  a  part  of  each  evangelist's  story  is  this 
death !  How  clear  and  minute  is  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  trial,  the  torture,  the  burial,  and  the 
resurrection !  How  calm  and  wide  is  the  spirit 
of  the  narration,  tender  with  love  for  Jesus,  yet 
without  invective,  without  resentment  towards  his 
tormentors,  although  these  narrations  were  recited, 
collected,  and  perfected  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
fierce  party  conflict  between  Christians  and  Jews ! 
It  is,  above  all  else,  in  his  death  that  the  power  of 
Jesus  to  forgive  is  lifted  up.  As  the  supreme 
fact  of  his  ministry  is  his  death,  so  his  death  shows 
forth  our  supreme  good  —  divine  forgiveness. 
Here  only  God  and  man  meet.  Jesus  said, 
"Father,  forgive  them  for  there  is  excuse  for 
them."  We  must  say,  "Father,  forgive  us  as  we 
forgive  those  who  torture  us."  We  do  not  now 
understand  this  atonement  —  even  our  faith  grasps 
only  a  little  part  of  it.  Some  of  us  grasp  one 
part,  some  another;  and  the  fragments  do  not 
join  at  their  edges,  nor  even  indicate  how  great 
and  beautiful  is  the  whole. 

Yet  let  us  rejoice  in  our  gleanings !  It  is 
human  death  that  has  given  us  all  the  thoughts 
we  have  of  an  immortal  good.  If  all  men  were 
yet  alive,  how  indifferent  must  we  be  to  any  hope 
higher  than  that  of  earth!  It  is  love  and  love's 
forgiveness  that  raise  the  standard  of  blessedness 
on  earth  and  therefore  raise  the  standard  of  the 
hope  beyond  earth.  Misery  makes  heaven  only  a 
place  of  relief.     The  nobler,  the  healthier  man's 

2A 


354     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS 

life  here,  the  nobler  and  healthier  his  hope  of 
heaven.  The  work  of  joy  for  earth  which  Jesus 
wrought,  seen  close  beside  his  death  in  the  midst 
of  his  life  —  this  sight  gave  a  new  reality,  a  glow, 
a  warmth,  to  the  world's  hope  of  immortality. 
To  share  this  hope  there  is  no  need  first  to  define 
the  divine  nature.  "We  needs  must  love  the 
highest  when  we  see  it."  Having  seen  him  whom 
we  worship  passing  visibly  beyond  the  grave,  all 
highest  hope  and  warmest  love  is  henceforth 
centred  there.  To  have  seen  the  mind  of  Christ, 
the  way  in  which  he  could  forgive,  the  motive 
from  which  he  served  men,  all  the  service  he  tried 
to  render;  to  have  felt  ever  so  slightly  his  healing 
touch  on  the  body;  to  have  heard,  even  as  in 
sleep,  his  word  that  frees  the  will;  to  have  felt 
the  comfort  of  his  presence,  is  enough  at  least 
for  this  —  that  henceforth  the  death  that  passed  on 
him  is  —  can  in  the  nature  of  things  only  be  — 
transition;  and  that  a  state  where  he  could  more 
perfectly  realise  his  will  would  have  for  us  the 
beauty  of  home  because  our  will  would  be  realised 
there.  This  alone  is  no  small  thing.  As  the 
painter  compels  the  gaze  of  those  who  look  upon 
his  picture  to  travel  and  focus  where  he  will,  so  by 
the  intensity  and  fulness  of  his  life,  by  the  swift 
pathos  of  his  transient  death,  does  Jesus  compel 
the  hearts  of  those  who  love  him  to  hoard  their 
greatest  treasure  beyond  the  gates  of  death. 

The  very  pressing  question  rises,  May  we  live 
where  he  is  ?  There  is,  as  far  as  we  know  or  can 
reasonably  believe,  one  law  of  life  in  the  universe, 
—  every  living  thing  must  be  able  to  correspond 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    355 

with  its  environment,  otherwise  life  passes  away. 
How,  then,  should  we  be  able  to  survive  in  the 
spiritual  environment  of  the  fuller  presence  of  Jesus? 
How  little  we  know  concerning  the  next  stage 
of  existence  from  the  teaching  of  Jesus  may  be 
vividly  brought  to  mind  by  the  reflection  that  he 
gives  not  the  slightest  indication  whether  man's 
spirit  continues  within  the  material  universe  for 
an  age,  or  for  ages  upon  ages,  endued  with  some 
other  kind  of  body,  or  whether  its  life  is  no  longer 
subject  to  conditions  of  time  and  space.  It 
is  frequently  assumed  that  none  but  a  materially 
minded  man  can  think  of  the  next  life  under  con- 
ditions of  time  and  space :  all  that  is  true  is  that 
we  are  compelled  by  the  constitution  of  our  minds 
to  believe  that  reality,  the  essential  self,  must  tran- 
scend those  conditions.  There  is,  however,  no 
reason  to  assume  that  the  self  can  only  exist  either 
in  the  present  material  body  or  in  a  purely  spiritual 
condition.  There  may  be  a  thousand  worlds,  a 
thousand  intervening  stages.1  Even  if  the  universe 
of  sense  be  but  a  dream,  it  may  have  many  un- 
foldings.  The  belief  that  our  spirits,  after  this  life, 
pass  immediately  out  of  time  and  space  is  neither 
necessary  to  thought  nor  is  it  countenanced  in  the 
Gospels.  If  the  visions  of  the  resurrection  life 
were  objective  the  evidence,  is  all  the  other  way. 
The  body  of  the  resurrection  was  certainly  as 
material  as  is  light  or  sound. 

1  "The  astronomer  has  set  before  us  the  infinite  magnitude 
of  space,  and  the  practical  eternity  of  the  duration  of  the  uni- 
verse." Huxley's  Lay  Sermons,  p.  19.  See  also  Appendix, 
note  D. 


356     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS    book  iv 

What,  then,  may  we  gather  from  the  Gospels 
concerning  that  stage  of  existence  in  which  Jesus 
has  promised  to  meet  his  own,  and  where  his 
kingdom,  begun  on  earth,  must  be  continued  ? 
In  the  life  of  Jesus  we  see  that  his  strength  of 
desire,  his  intensity  of  purpose,  his  eagerness  of 
plan  and  intention,  grew  stronger  as  death  ap- 
proached; and  we  are  permitted,  according  to  the 
four  records,  to  see  that  after  having  passed 
through  death,  there  was,  in  this,  no  change.  In 
the  visions  of  himself  which  he  vouchsafed  to  his 
friends  he  was  still  full  of  passionate  desire  to 
pursue  those  ends  which  he  had  sought  while  he 
lived  among  men,  and  it  was  only  to  those  who 
had  devoted  their  all  to  furthering  his  ends  that  he 
then  gave  his  company.  The  great  importance  of 
the  resurrection-visions  for  us  is  their  proof  that 
death  brought  no  break  or  discontinuance  in  the 
character  and  purpose  of  Jesus.  If  it  did  not 
change  him,  we  have  no  reason  to  suppose  death 
will,  in  these  respects,  change  any  man.  Taking 
up  life  after  death  with  the  same  character  we 
have  here,  should  we  survive  in  his  company  ? 

We  turn  to  his  words  and  ask,  What  does 
Jesus  teach  about  this  ?  The  heaven,  purgatory, 
and  hell  which  our  fathers  built  so  grandly  in  the 
unseen,  with  splendid  stones  hewn  from  the  literal 
interpretation  of  parable,  have  faded  from  our  view 
as  fade  the  glowing  cloud-mountains  of  sunrise 
in  the  increasing  light  of  day.  To  replace  them 
with  the  imagery  of  " Paradise "  and  "Sheol" 
and  "Gehenna,"  taken  from  the  literature  in 
circulation  at  the  Christian  era,  would  serve  us 


cH.vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH     357 

nothing.  Jesus  used  these  names  to  convey  his 
most  serious  teaching;  the  names  themselves  had  no 
one  accepted  definition;  the  literature  of  the  time  is 
proof  of  this.  In  truth  the  highest  religious  emotion 
is  only  awakened  by  terms  which  will  be  found  to 
defy  definition.  Thus  the  term  "glory,"  except 
when  signifying  human  honour,  has  only  rhetorical 
value,  as  it  is  probable  that  no  two  men  have  the 
same  notion  of  transcendental  glory.  "The  end  of 
the  world,"  "the  creation  of  the  world,"  "the  higher 
life"  are  terms  of  the  same  sort.  They  can  be 
used  to  convey  the  most  valuable  and  important 
religious  thought,  while,  at  the  same  time,  no 
intelligent  man  could  cavil  at  the  particular  prop- 
ositions in  which  they  occurred  on  any  ground  of 
scientific  inaccuracy.  Words  of  such  indetermi- 
nate connotation  are  useful  in  turning  the  attention 
to  most  vital  ideas,  which,  while  necessary  to  serious 
thought,  mark  the  limit  of  human  knowledge,  and 
are  the  more  useful  because  they  mark  that  limit. 
What,  then,  does  Jesus  teach  ?  The  belief  that 
all  men,  in  the  process  of  natural  evolution,  will 
in  some  far-ofF  end  attain  to  divine  bliss,  may  or 
may  not  be  true;  it  is  neither  affirmed  nor  denied 
in  the  gospel.  The  belief  that  all  who  reject 
Christian  rites  and  refuse  to  repeat  creeds  will  fail 
to  attain  to  the  joy  of  Jesus,  has  still  less  foundation 
in  his  words  and  ministry.  What  Jesus  does  make 
very  distinct,  what  he  does  promise  very  assuredly, 
is  to  lead  his  own  for  ever  onward,  to  share  with 
them  all  his  joy.  All  that  Jesus  taught  of  the 
character  of  heaven  was  his  own  personal  character. 
All   that   he   vouched   of  God   was   that   he   had 


358     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS 

the  same  character.  All  that  he  promised  for 
the  future  was  that  his  servants  should  dwell  with 
him.  When  we  have  gazed  our  fill  at  all  the 
rich  imagery  of  the  parables,  and  pondered  all  the 
poetry  of  his  teaching,  we  know  nothing  more 
about  the  unseen  than  that  the  Father's  house  is 
vaster  than  we  can  conceive,  and  the  Father's  love 
greater  than  we  can  dream;  but  the  great  tender- 
ness of  Jesus,  and  the  all-embracing  love  of  the 
Father  which  he  constantly  recites,  do  not  in  his 
teaching  justify  an  inference  of  universal  salvation. 
The  death  of  Jesus,  the  manner  of  that  death, 
gives  to  any  doctrine  of  easy  and  universal  bliss 
absolute  denial.  In  the  midst  of  all  his  teach- 
ing concerning  the  Father's  love  and  readiness 
to  do  all  physical  and  moral  good  to  man  that 
man  could  desire  in  response  to  the  faith  that  is 
the  condition  requisite  for  his  working  —  in  the 
midst  of  this  teaching,  and  after  expressing  his 
own  most  earnest  prayer  to  escape  premature 
death,  we  see  him  suffering  an  early  death  in  its 
most  terrible  form.  If  God  be  the  Father  of  whom 
Jesus  spoke,  he  would,  if  he  could,  have  saved 
this  son  who  had  served  him  pre-eminently. 
Whatever  else  this  mean,  it  means  at  least  this, 
that  we  are  face  to  face  with  suffering  which  God's 
love  and  power  cannot  prevent.  We  reason  very 
naturally  when  we  say  that  God,  being  great  and 
good,  could  not  punish  man  severely,  because  none 
of  us  would  carry  our  anger  toward  any  one  so 
much  weaker  than  ourselves  to  such  a  length; 
but  if  suffering  be  not  God's  chastisement,  it 
is  real  and  terrible,  else  were  such  a  martyrdom 


ch.  vi    THE    POWER   OF   HIS    DEATH    359 

as  that  of  Jesus  impossible.1  In  considering  the 
ministry  and  death  of  Jesus  we  are  forced  to  turn 
our  attention  to  a  destruction  of  life  and  beauty 
which  is  inconsistent  with  any  inference  we  strive  to 
make  from  the  goodness  of  God  to  the  nature  of 
his  dealing  with  man.  To  the  materialist  all  that 
happened  to  Jesus  is  perfectly  explained,  and  as 
historic  fact  it  has  adequate  explanation  for  us  all; 
but  in  the  religious  sphere  man,  regarding  God 
as  absolute  power  and  perfect  love,  cannot  find 
adequate  explanation  for  it.  The  religious  heart 
has  always  demanded  an  explanation.  Every  ex- 
planation that  has  been  given  may  have  shadowed 
forth  some  part  of  the  truth,  but  the  mystery  still 
remains.  No  theory  of  vicarious  suffering  does 
more  than  place  the  mystery  one  step  farther  back, 
and  that  mystery  teaches  us  this  at  least  very 
clearly,  that  we  cannot  argue  from  God's  goodness 
to  any  assurance  of  universal  felicity. 

One  thing,  at  least,  is  surely  made  clear  by  a 
study  of  the  gospel  —  the  pains  Jesus  bore  must 
have  had  a  purpose  quite  other  than  that  of  satisfy- 
ing God.  It  cannot  have  been  physical  pain  or 
physical  death  that  Jesus  regarded  as  a  means  of 
lifting  us  to  closer  communion  with  God.  Lest 
we  should  think  that,  we  are  told  that  they  crucified 
with  him  two  others,  one  on  his  right  hand  and 
one  on  his  left.  These  suffered,  and  from  the 
same  cruel  laws;  their  pain  does  not  lift  us  nearer 
God.  Every  page  of  the  world's  history  is  stained 
with  blood  and  vocal  with  the  cries  of  the  wretched, 
and  the  world  is  not  helped  thereby.  That  Jesus 
1  See  Appendix,  note  D. 


360     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS 

shared  all  this,  and,  while  bearing  it,  could  forgive 
those  who  inflicted  it,  is  for  us  the  help  and  lesson 
of  his  physical  pain.  What  pain  he  bore  and 
forgave  as  a  man  is  to  be  the  measure  of  our  love 
to  men;  pain  cannot  be  part  of  his  service  to  God, 
or  of  ours.  In  emphasising  God's  desire  for 
human  pain  the  Christian  Church  was  obeying  a 
pre-Christian,  ascetic  impulse;  it  was  not  part  of 
her  Christian  inspiration. 

Jesus,  who  lived  to  show  us  an  all-embracing 
salvation,  certainly  showed  us  in  his  death  how 
terrible  are  the  powers  of  cruelty  which  exist  in  this 
world  and,  for  aught  we  know,  in  other  worlds. 
In  the  death  of  Jesus  the  cause  is  clearly  seen  to  be 
the  cruel  will  of  men  —  men  who  stood  for  religion 
and  justice.  They  could  have  had  no  power  at  all 
to  do  what  they  did  if  they  had  not  acquired  it  by 
virtue  of  religion  and  justice.  Pilate  in  the  name 
of  justice,  the  leaders  of  the  Jewish  Church  in  the 
name  of  religion,  did  this  thing.  Nor  were  the 
systems  of  religion  and  justice  represented  fraudu- 
lent; they  were  great  factors  of  good,  and  behind 
them  both  stood  the  goodness  of  God.  Only  a 
superficial  sophistry  can  deny  this,  or  deny  that 
cruel  and  wicked  deeds  were  the  frequent  result  of 
both  systems,  and  that  men  who  lent  their  wills  to 
do  these  deeds  were  acting  in  direct  opposition  to 
the  goodness  of  God.  There  was  nothing  re- 
markable in  the  way  the  agents  of  these  systems 
dealt  with  Jesus.  Granted  their  beliefs  and  policy, 
they  would  and  must  have  dealt  in  the  same  way 
with  any  other  who  came  before  them  on  such  accu- 
sation and  without  making  defence.     The  name  of 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    361 

God,  the  goodness  of  God,  partly  expressed  in  the 
systems  which  gave  birth  and  character  to  the  men 
who  killed  Jesus,  lent  them  authority.  More  than 
that,  the  life  of  God  created  and  sustained  them. 
It  was  in  God  that  they  lived  and  moved  and  had 
their  being  while  they  did  this  dastardly  thing. 
This  is  the  Christian  faith;  that  God  the  Father 
who  forgives  every  returning  sinner  instantly, 
freely,  the  Father  who  can  so  work  on  the  bodies  of 
men  that  through  their  own  faith  the  paralysed,  the 
leprous,  the  possessed  and  the  vicious,  can  at  his 
word  be  made  whole  and  free  —  this  same  Father, 
having  given  his  creatures  part  of  his  own  freedom, 
remains  the  passive  upholder  of  that  freedom  in 
its  cruelty,  while  it  wreaks  destruction  on  that 
which  he  loves  most  tenderly. 

Standing  before  this  awful  fact,  what  reason 
have  we  to  suppose  that  the  moment  our  souls 
pass  beyond  this  life  they  will,  unless  they  have 
attained  to  the  kingdom  of  Jesus,  pass  beyond  the 
power  of  the  cruel  will  of  men  ?  The  men  who 
caused  the  populace  to  howl  and  cry  for  the  torture 
and  death  of  Jesus  died  in  their  sins  —  purpose, 
character,  beliefs  unchanged.  What  reason  have 
we  to  suppose  that  such  men  in  the  next  stage  of 
life  are  powerless  to  do  evil,  or  are  separated  from 
all  whom  they  would  persecute  ?  Further,  we  have 
no  reason  to  believe  that  human  cruelty  is  the  only 
cruelty,  or  the  most  powerful.  We  have  seen  that 
the  cruel  will  in  man  gives  a  presumption  that 
there  is  a  cruel  will  external  to  man.  Human  hope 
has  often  conceived  of  this  Evil  Will  as  chained  in 
every  state  of  being  but  this;    but  to  this  conceit 


362     HIS   WAYS    AND   OUR   WAYS 

Jesus  gave  no  authority.  Lazarus  was  safe;  but 
Dives,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  fairly  well- 
intentioned  man  with  a  care  for  his  brothers,  was 
tormented  —  by  whom  ?  and  with  what  sort  of 
torment  ?  That  flame  is  a  figure,  but  even  in 
present  worldly  competition  its  heat  may  be  seen 
and  felt. 

'Tis  the  gradual  furnace  of  the  world, 
In  whose  hot  air  our  spirits  are  upcurl'd 
Until  they  crumble,  or  else  grow  like  steel  — 
Which  kills  in  us  the  bloom,  the  youth,  the  spring  — 
Which  leaves  the  fierce  necessity  to  feel, 
But  takes  away  the  power  —  this  can  avail, 
By  drying  up  our  joy  in  everything, 
To  make  our  former  pleasures  all  seem  stale. 

—  M.  Arnold,  Tristram  and  Iseult. 

Jesus  teaches  us  the  Father's  love,  and  how  much 
he  suffers  with  the  suffering  of  all  his  creatures, 
telling  us  that  not  a  sparrow  falls  without  God; 
this  is  said  in  full  face  of  a  great  slaughter  of 
sparrows  for  the  market  of  Jerusalem  !  Consider 
the  lilies,  which  God  hath  clothed  better  than 
Solomon  in  all  his  glory,  and  yet  on  the  morrow 
they  are  to  be  cut  down  !  "  How  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together  as  a  hen  gathereth 
her  own  brood  under  her  wings,"  is  one  of  his  most 
exquisite  expressions  of  his  love  to  men;  and  its 
following  word  is,  "Ye  would  not.  Your  house  is 
left  unto  you  desolate  until  ye  say,  Blessed  is  he 
that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord."  How 
many  generations  would  fall  at  Jerusalem  before 
that  desolate  city  should  arise  and  bless  his  name  ? 
Jesus  distinctly  states  that  he  had  good  hope  of 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    363 

"saving"  the  sick,  the  poor,  and  the  lost,  but 
small  hope  of  reaching  the  whole,  the  rich,  and 
the  righteous.  There  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one 
sinner  that  repenteth;  but  what  about  the  ninety 
and  nine  over  whom  heaven  has  no  special  cause 
to  rejoice  —  for  we  cannot  conceive  that  God  fails 
to  rejoice  over  moral  beauty  wherever  he  sees  it  ? 
Who,  then,  are  the  whole,  the  rich,  and  the 
righteous  whom  Jesus  did  not  hope  to  save  ?  We 
meet  in  his  ministry  three  types  of  men  who 
would  seem  to  be  beyond  his  reach.  First,  there 
are  those  who  have  consistently  done  what  they 
believed  to  be  right,  and  are  mildly  desirous  of 
conforming  to  a  higher  rule  of  life  if  they  can 
find  it.  The  young  ruler,  the  scribe  who  asked 
which  was  the  first  commandment,  probably 
Nicodemus,  perhaps  Simon  to  whom  the  parable 
of  the  two  debtors  was  told,  are  examples  of  this 
class,  and  we  know  that  a  large  number  among 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees  practised  a  life  consistent 
with  their  moral  ideals.  Secondly,  there  are  those 
who,  finding  in  themselves  a  lack  of  virtue,  seek 
to  supply  the  lack  by  teaching  virtue  to  others. 
They  strive  to  enter  into  life,  but  their  strivings 
are  not  in  harmony  with  what  is  best  in  their 
own  hearts,  still  less  with  the  higher  life  that  God 
would  base  on  these  natural  dispositions.  Such 
are  those  who  strain  at  gnats,  who  ask  for  a 
sign,  who  slay  the  prophets  to  do  God  service, 
who  say,  "I  go,  sir,"  and  go  not.  Such  in  the 
concrete  were  those  priests  and  lawyers  who  asked 
Jesus  to  reprove  the  hosannas  of  the  multitude, 
who  desired  his  disciples  to  fast  and  charged  him 


364     HIS    WAYS    AND   OUR   WAYS 

with  the  possession  of  a  devil,  who  asked  him  by 
what  authority  he  cleansed  the  temple,  who  com- 
passed his  death.  Thirdly,  there  are  those  who 
break  the  laws  of  God  and  nature  and  will  not 
seek  God's  grace  —  such  as  Judas  and  the  im- 
penitent thief.  In  these  three  classes,  as  seen  in 
life  around  us,  we  find  an  aspect  of  God's  provi- 
dence, a  psychological  problem,  that  baffles  our 
understanding.  We  meet  with  men  and  women 
of  the  first  class  who  have  rational  and  moral 
beauty  as  far  above  that  of  the  average  person 
as  is  the  physical  beauty  of  others.  Yet  in  them 
this  perfection  is  not  combined  with  those  pas- 
sionate and  insatiable  desires  which  cannot  find 
ultimate  object  except  in  God.  They  display  a 
lack  of  warmth  even  in  human  relationships.  This 
type  of  moral  beauty  is  apt  to  content  itself  with 
niceties  of  morals,  refinements  of  taste,  or  specula- 
tions about  religion.  Beginning  on  a  very  high 
level,  such  persons  do  not  grow  greater.  The 
common  sinner,  if  rising  in  the  scale  at  all,  makes 
great  progress.  Both  nature  and  the  gospel  show 
us  that  God's  love  is  not  content  with  any  stage 
of  perfection,  but  delights  only  in  the  perfect 
rhythm  of  endless  growth  and  regeneration  which 
constitutes  progress.  God  must  love  moral  beauty 
—  the  heart  of  Jesus  was  drawn  to  those  who  had 
kept  the  commandments.  A  mother  must  rejoice 
in  the  beauty  of  her  child  —  but  if,  as  in  some  cases, 
an  early  perfection  of  symmetry  means  that 
her  child  must  ever  remain  a  dwarf,  her  rejoicing 
is  changed  to  agony.  It  is  in  just  such  cases  of 
apparent  moral  perfection  that  we  realise  that  to 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    365 

"need  no  repentance"  is  an  actual  human  con- 
dition which  makes  the  higher  life  impossible, 
except  in  the  sense  in  which  all  things  are  ultimately 
possible  with  God.  In  the  second  class  we  see 
the  fanatic,  the  bigot,  the  partisan.  Domestic 
gloom,  ecclesiastical  strife,  political  rancour,  are 
the  marks  of  their  presence,  which  spreads  no 
compensating  sweetness.  They,  too,  are  obeying 
their  conscience,  and  we  marvel  at  their  obvious 
virtues  while  we  suffer  from  their  ill-doing. 
Thirdly,  there  are  those  whose  egotism  produces 
real  moral  obliquity  on  a  grosser  plane.  Criminal 
psychology  is  proving  that  there  are  men  who 
literally  can  "find  no  place  for  repentance,"  be- 
cause they  actually  think  conduct  right  in  them- 
selves which  would  be  wrong  in  another.  Such 
men  are  very  often  religious,  and,  as  far  as  we  can 
see,  incapable  of  seeking  reformation.  Jesus  al- 
ways depicts  the  "unsaved"  as  self-righteous,  and 
identifies  repentance  with  faith.  There  is  hope, 
from  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  that  beyond  this 
world,  in  drear  ages  of  unsafe  and  unhappy 
life,  unrepentant  men  may  yet  discover  their 
own  need;  Jesus  always  represents  the  regener- 
ative activity  of  God  as  pouring  itself  into  all 
creation  except  when  shut  out  by  the  free  will 
which  refuses  to  acknowledge  its  own  need.  But 
in  this  life  such  people  appear  to  us,  as  to  Jesus, 
to  be  shut  out  from  the  higher  life  by  a  natural 
incapacity  to  see  and  desire  it.  We  are  apt  to 
think  that  if  we  can  say  that  they  are  not  respon- 
sible it  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  no  evil  will 
befall    them :     not    so    did    Jesus    regard    moral 


366     HIS    WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS     book  iv 

obliquity;  he  said  that  because  men  could  not 
hear  and  could  not  perceive  they  could  not  be 
saved  from  wrath  to  come. 

If  we  believe  in  Jesus  we  believe  that  he  can 
welcome  his  own  after  death  to  a  condition  of 
immediate  safety,  that  among  his  own  there  are 
multitudes  who  do  not  expect  his  protection,  that 
he  will  prepare  a  place  where  their  will,  like  his, 
shall  be  accomplished  by  God;  beyond  that  we 
know  nothing.  All  those  who  do  not  attain  to 
the  heaven  where  God's  will  is  perfectly  done  — 
and  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  they  are  represented 
as  at  least  as  many  as  the  saved  —  may  remain,  as 
on  earth,  exposed  to  destructive  forces  within  and 
without  themselves,  for  there  is  no  ground  in  the 
Gospels  for  the  supposition  that  God's  will  is 
perfectly  done  in  "hell"  any  more  than  on  earth. 

What,  then,  are  we  forced  to  believe  about 
"the  righteous"  and  any  others  whom  Jesus  did 
not  promise  to  save  ?  Certainly  this,  that  not  one 
of  them  falls  without  the  Father,  that  their  failure 
and  pain,  as  long  as  it  exists,  must  be  greater  pain 
to  him  than  to  them,  that  he  will  be  as  kind  to 
them  as  to  those  who  are  saved.  Whatever  sun 
may  shine  in  the  future  stages  of  human  life,  the 
almighty  Father,  by  the  very  necessity  of  his  nature, 
must  make  it  shine  on  the  evil  as  well  as  on  the 
good.  Those  who  are  without  the  salvation  will 
remain  for  a  time  true  to  their  own  character. 
Some  will  be  lost  in  their  self-refinements  and 
small  attainments.  Some  will  always  be  seeking 
to  save  themselves  at  the  expense  of  any  who 
may   interfere  with   their   rights   or   dispute   their 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS    DEATH    367 

religion  or  policy.  Some  will  more  and  more  be 
devoured  by  the  flames  of  hatred  and  covetous- 
ness.  Some  will  constantly  wail  to  God  to  have 
mercy  upon  them,  when  all  that  they  need  is  to 
be  merciful  to  him  by  ceasing  to  put  the  life 
by  which  he  upholds  them  to  lower  uses.  Is  it 
necessary  that  life  should  be  put  to  its  lowest  use 
for  the  user  to  be  "lost"  in  the  sense  in  which 
Jesus  used  that  word  ?  Surely  not.  Outside  of 
Jesus  most  men  find  their  best  strength  by  par- 
ticipation in  fighting  and  gaingetting.  They  win 
much;  they  gain  much;  and  there  is  a  mixture 
of  good  and  evil  in  it  all.  The  good  often  pre- 
ponderates; and  all  good,  even  the  most  trivial 
and  transitory,  is  of  God.  For  all  we  know, 
men  who  seek  to  live  for  themselves  on  earth 
may  be  taken  after  death  to  one  and  another 
region  of  the  universe  where  there  is  work  suited 
to  their  capacities  and  tastes;  they  may  compete 
for  ages  upon  ages  with  other  living  things,  as 
the  lower  lives  from  which  they  sprang  com- 
peted in  the  storm  of  earthly  development.  Some, 
by  their  very  fitness  for  violence  and  sharp  deal- 
ing, may  survive  whole  myriads  of  their  kind, 
and  become  —  themselves  slaves  —  monarchs  of 
destructive  forces.  Such  lives  are  led  on  earth : 
why  not  on  vaster  scale  in  other  realms  of  soul  or 
in  the  pathways  of  the  stars  ? 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  only  salvation 
Jesus  offers  is  the  offer  of  himself,  his  own  charac- 
ter, his  own  companionship,  his  own  service  of  God, 
as  the  supreme  and  perfect  good.  To  love  men  as 
he  loved  them,  to  serve  them  as  he  served  them3  to 


368    HIS   WAYS    AND    OUR   WAYS 

suffer  loss  at  their  hands  without  impatience  as  he 
suffered,  is  the  only  test  of  his  companionship  and 
of  God's  service  in  the  individual  life;  and  his 
only  plan  for  the  ultimate  salvation  of  the  race  upon 
earth  was  by  the  multiplication  of  such  individuals, 
by  the  cumulative  strength  of  their  corporate  life. 
Outside  the  kingdom  of  heaven  it  is  not  the  man 
who  most  benefits  the  community  in  which  he 
lives  who,  in  the  course  of  evolution,  is  necessarily 
fittest  to  survive,  but  he  who  can  thrive  best  upon 
the  community.  It  is  not  the  nation  that  gives 
most  richly  to  the  world,  but  the  nation  that  can, 
by  strength  and  skill,  take  most  toll  of  other 
nations,  that  becomes  greatest  and  endures  longest. 
It  is  not  the  religious  system  which  leads  the 
greatest  number  of  men  most  quickly  forward  to 
nobler  ends  and  higher  uses  whose  kingdom  in 
this  world  is  most  visible,  but  the  system  that  can 
most  effectively  coerce  the  human  conscience  to 
enrich  and  to  fight  for  its  organisation.  If  the 
kingdom  Jesus  founded  were  under  the  same  laws 
of  development,  in  the  same  stage  of  evolution, 
as  the  kingdoms  of  the  world,  his  servants,  as  he 
himself  taught,  would  need  to  fight.  But  the 
kingdom  he  founded  is  subject  to  a  higher  law  of 
development.  It  grows  and  spreads  only  by  love 
and  service ;  and  when  men  would  use  the  processes 
of  fighting  and  getting  on  its  behalf  it  fades  and 
fails.  In  that  way  they  may  get  much,  they  may 
win  much;  but  the  kingdom  for  which  they 
thought  to  gain  and  to  win  is  diminished,  its  in- 
visible power  is  withdrawn,  its  strength  is  impaired, 
its  victory   retarded.     What   is   effected   by   such 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    369 

methods  is  only  the  organisation  of  some  temporary 
army  under  a  false  Christ,  the  building  of  some 
transient  temple  in  whose  inner  sanctuary  the  God 
of  love  is  forgotten. 

In  his  death  Jesus  teaches  us  first  this  earthly 
thing;  when  we  have  understood  it  we  may  be 
taught  the  heavenly  meaning  of  that  death.  There 
can  be  no  question  that  had  Jesus  chosen  to  invoke 
and  play  upon  party  spirit  he  had  the  ability  to 
save  himself.  The  insight  that  could  give  an 
unanswerable  answer  to  every  caviller,  an  adequate 
reply  to  every  questioner,  the  eloquence  which 
could  draw  the  multitude,  the  indignation  which 
could  quell  the  violent  and  overawe  the  super- 
stitious —  these  would  have  enabled  him  to  form, 
of  the  noblest  in  the  state,  a  powerful  faction. 
1  Which  of  us,  leading  a  cause  which  he  believed  to 
be  the  cause  of  truth  against  falsehood,  of  the 
humble  against  the  proud,  of  the  poor  against 
oppression  —  which  of  us,  leading  such  a  cause, 
and  having  it  in  his  power  to  arouse  a  party  in 
the  state  and  arm  it  with  the  strength  of  an  in- 
vincible enthusiasm,  reinforcing  it  with  the  ever- 
triumphant  hosts  of  God,  would  choose  to  suffer 
repulse,  contumely,  and  the  apparent  extinc- 
tion of  the  cause  of  which  he  was  the  champion, 
rather  than  break  the  law  of  love  and  offer  battle 
to  his  brothers  in  thought  or  word  or  deed  ?  This 
is  the  earthly  side  of  the  Atonement.  It  is  only 
by  such  a  conception  of  duty  that  man  can  be 
made   at  one  with   man.     Most  of  us   feel  how 

1  This  passage,  and  some  others  scattered  throughout  the 
book,  were  first  written  in  letters  to  The  Spectator. 

2B 


370     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS 

powerless  we  are  even  to  rise  to  such  a  conception 
of  duty;  and  to  those  who  have  the  greatness  to 
perceive  the  strength  and  beauty  of  the  law  of 
love,  how  far  is  it  possible  to  fulfil  it  ? 

Who,  then,  can  be  saved  ?  Which  of  us  belong 
to  his  kingdom,  and  live  as  he  lived  ?  Which  of 
us  in  the  historic  Church  of  the  past,  which  of 
us  to-day,  have,  or  in  the  near  future  will  have, 
the  fitness  to  survive  in  his  presence  ?  Does 
the  death  of  Jesus  in  any  way  produce  this  fit- 
ness in  us  who  have  no  fitness  ?  Was  his  death 
necessary  to  make  even  the  most  contrite  heart 
at  one  with  God  ?  What  did  he  mean  by  "giving 
his  soul  a  ransom  for  many,"  and  shedding  his 
blood  "unto  the  remission  of  sins"  ? 

We  have  seen  that  we  do  not  know  what  God's 
justice  is  because  we  have  never  seen  or  conceived 
of  any  punishment  of  guilt  which  did  not  fall  also 
on  the  innocent;  we  do  not  call  the  punishment  of 
the  innocent  just;  we  are  therefore  forced  to  admit 
that  the  divine  justice  is  yet  far  beyond  our  sight. 
If  we  do  not  know  what  God's  justice  is  we  cannot 
comprehend  his  forgiveness;  yet  for  this  we  have 
a  measure  which,  however  inadequate,  gives  us  a 
little  knowledge  —  "as  we  forgive  them  that  tres- 
pass against  us."  In  the  hour  when  we  voluntarily 
suffer  rather  than  tempt  men  to  sin,  when  we  do 
heartily  forgive  a  great  wrong  which  we  might 
punish,  we  realise,  although  we  cannot  explain, 
some  part  of  the  forgiveness  of  God;  we  should 
have  realised  more  had  we  obeyed  this  law  in  our 
corporate  life,  but  we  have  not  done  so.  If  we 
cannot  explain  God's  justice  or  forgiveness,  how 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH    371 

can  we  understand  God's  conception  of  atonement 
for  sin,  or  the  philosophy  of  the  way  by  which  the 
sinner  can  come  into  communion  with  God  ? 

Yet  when  the  Christian  believes  that  the  In- 
carnation gives  us  a  perfect  earthly  life,  lived  by 
the  Christ  on  earth  only  in  that  strength  which 
God  will  give  to  every  man  who  looks  to  him 
with  a  like  faith,  then  he  realises  most  deeply 
that  something  external  to  his  own  endeavour 
must  be  done  to  unite  him  to  God  as  Jesus  was 
united  to  God.  It  is  not  prayers  or  tears  or  zeal 
or  self-loathing  or  love  of  man  or  the  vision  of 
God  in  all  things,  that  can  do  for  him  what  he 
needs.  He  hungers  and  thirsts  for  more  life. 
Faith  —  yes,  faith,  he  knows  —  will  bring  this 
life;  but  his  faith  fails.  He  holds  out  empty 
hands  to  God  and  faints  with  intensity  of  desire. 
That  which  lifts  him  up  and  satisfies  him  is  not 
the  vision  of  the  Christ  in  vigorous  life  here  on 
earth,  or  in  the  resurrection,  but  the  vision  of 
the  dying  Christ,  conquering  even  death  with 
love. 

We  do  not  understand  how  this  is,  or  why. 
All  attempts  to  explain  the  Atonement  may  be 
conceived  as  attempts  to  answer  the  defiance,  more 
or  less  conscious,  which  man's  reason  offers  to 
God.  The  wrath  of  man  and  the  meekness  of 
God  answer  and  re-answer  one  another  in  the 
darkness  that  shadows  Calvary.  We  cannot  yet 
hear  clearly  what  God  says;  the  Church  tries  to 
hear  and  to  interpret,  and  through  the  ages  we 
hear  her  in  colloquy  with  Reason. 

Reason  cries,  "If  God  were  good  he  could  not 


372     HIS   WAYS   AND   OUR   WAYS     book  iv 

look  upon  the  sin  and  misery  of  man  and  live;  his 
heart  would  break. " 

The  Church  points  to  the  Crucifixion  and  says, 
"God's  heart  did  break." 

Reason  cries,  "Born  and  reared  in  sin  and  pain 
as  we  are,  how  can  we  keep  from  sin  ?  It  is  the 
Creator  who  is  responsible;  it  is  God  who  deserves 
to  be  punished." 

The  Church  kneels  by  the  cross,  and  whispers, 
"God  takes  the  responsibility  and  bears  the 
punishment. " 

Reason  cries,  "Who  is  God  ?  What  is  God  ? 
The  name  stands  for  the  unknown.  It  is  blas- 
phemy to  say  we  know  him." 

The  Church  kisses  the  feet  of  the  dying  Christ, 
and  says,  "We  must  worship  the  majesty  we  see." 

In  very  truth  this  is  almost  all  the  Church,  as  a 
whole,  has  said;  but  within  her  there  is  a  babel 
of  tongues,  and  much  more  has  been  said  and 
more  feebly.  Even  what  seems  to  be  the  essence 
of  the  Church's  belief  cannot  satisfy  the  intellect 
if  it  be  regarded  as  her  whole,  or  her  final,  word. 

In  the  belief  and  practice  of  the  Christian 
Church  we  find  modifications  of  all  the  religious 
efforts  of  which  the  most  ancient  history  bears 
record.  If  in  estimating  the  sources  whence  the 
Christian  Church  sprang  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore 
any  religious  effort  the  world  has  known,  much 
less  can  the  Christian  of  to-day  afford  to  ignore 
such  inspiration  as  any  period  of  the  Christian 
Church  manifests.  The  modern  Christian  who 
should  think  to  serve  God  or  man  by  doing  so 
would    be    as    mad    as    a    statesman   who    should 


ch.  vi    THE   POWER   OF   HIS   DEATH 


373 


propose  to  abolish  existing  laws  and  customs  in 
order  to  invent  new  ones.  All  that  we  can  be  or 
do  is  the  growth  of  the  past.  A  flower,  when  it 
comes,  is  a  new  thing;  but  without  a  plant  there 
could  be  no  flower.  This  is  true  of  each  branch 
of  human  thought;  it  is  also  true  of  the  sum  of 
human  ideas.  If  Christianity  be  true,  the  Chris- 
tian Church  must  be  the  product  of  all  thought. 
Its  roots  are  in  the  furthest  beginnings  of  the  race; 
in  the  revelation  of  Jesus  it  came  forth  a  tender 
plant;  all  the  flower  and  fruit  of  the  future  de- 
pend upon  the  growth  of  the  plant. 


APPENDIX  A1 

No  doubt  the  fact  that  we  can  conceive  of,  and  Chris- 
tianity reveals,  a  God  who  shares  our  suffering,  though 
not  our  sin,  has  caused  the  Christian  Church  to  pic- 
ture God's  attitude  towards  the  one  as  differing  entirely 
from  his  attitude  towards  the  other.  But  that  the  divine 
nature  can  share  with  man  the  results  of  sin  is  no  proof 
that  those  results  are  in  harmony  with  the  divine  will, 
but  rather  the  reverse;  for  in  any  personality  of  which 
we  can  conceive,  what  is  in  harmony  with  the  will  can 
hardly  be  called  suffering  —  the  pain,  at  least,  must 
be  greatly  neutralised.  We  are  forced,  then,  either 
to  the  belief  that  when  God  shares  our  suffering,  that 
suffering  at  the  same  time  in  some  way  gives  him  the 
pleasure  of  harmony,  or  else  that  he  does  not  will  the 
pain  which  he  is  willing  to  share. 

This  argument  in  itself  is  not  sufficient  to  prove  that 
God  does  not  will  suffering,  but  it  does  refute  the  com- 
mon idea  that  because  Jesus  suffered  his  suffering  — 
and  inferentially  all  suffering  —  must  have  been  the  will 
of  God. 

1  See  above,  p.  109. 


375 


APPENDIX  B1 

The  great  strength  of  Christian  Science  seems  to  be 
that  it  does  not  attribute  suffering,  any  more  than  sin,  to 
God's  will,  and  has  in  this  respect  an  estimate  of  the 
Father's  character  in  harmony  with  that  of  Jesus.  No 
one  can  deny  that  when  St.  Peter  said,  "Thou  art  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God,"  he  said  it  of  one 
who,  by  word  and  act,  day  by  day,  had  clearly  proclaimed 
that  every  bodily  and  mental  disease  was  in  opposition  to 
the  Father's  will,  and  would  vanish  with  the  right  exer- 
cise of  human  faith.  It  would  seem  that  it  was  not  the 
ability  to  reason  correctly,  but  a  child-like  faith  in  the 
Father's  tenderness  and  in  his  enmity  to  all  ill,  that  Jesus 
regarded  as  the  first  qualification  for  his  service,  and 
this  the  Christian  Scientist  possesses.  But  the  salvation 
at  which  Jesus  aimed  was  certainly  the  salvation  of  all 
the  powers  of  man,  and  the  power  of  correct  thinking 
must  be  included  in  that  salvation. 

From  the  resume  of  Christian  Science  doctrine  which 
may  be  obtained  from  its  more  intelligible  writers,  it 
would  appear  that  they  deny  the  reality  of  sin  and  pain 
in  the  same  sense  in  which  man  in  his  metaphysical 
moments  usually  finds  it  necessary  to  deny  reality  to  the 
sensible  universe.  Even  if  it  is  true  that  we  are  bound 
by  the  necessities  of  thought  to  conceive  of  reality  as 
only  that  which  is  beyond  any  condition  of  time  and 
space,  this  merely  shows  that  the  body  and  all  its  sensa- 

1  See  above,  p.  1 21. 
376 


APPENDIX  B  377 

tions,  pleasant  or  painful,  must,  with  the  physical  uni- 
verse, be  regarded  as  unreal.  Christian  Science  seems  to 
make  a  religious  doctrine  of  half  this  assertion  —  viz., 
the  assertion  of  the  unreality  of  pain  and  sin.  Chris- 
tianity, taking  account  of  the  facts  of  the  universe  as  we 
know  them,  accepts  the  faith  that  health  is  to  be  dominant 
and  that  every  process  of  disease  may  and  must  be  domi- 
nated; but  this  does  not  give  any  colour  to  the  belief  that 
in  the  degree  in  which  the  body  is  real,  its  diseases  are  not 
as  real  as  its  health,  its  vices  as  its  temperance.  The 
gospel  of  Jesus  deals  only  with  the  spiritual  in  interaction 
with  the  physical  here  and  in  "the  life  of  the  ages,"  wher- 
ever and  however  "the  life  of  the  ages"  may  be  spent,  and 
gives  no  colour  to  the  belief  that  here,  or  in  any  part  of 
the  soul's  progression,  sin  and  pain  have  not  that  degree 
of  reality  with  which  other  phenomena  are  credited. 
What  is  clearly  revealed  in  the  gospel  is  that  God,  the 
creator  and  sustainer  of  all,  has  a  never-changing  will 
set  against  disease,  infirmity,  and  sin,  and  will  re-create 
man  in  health,  strength,  and  virtue  whenever  the  faithful 
recognition  of  this  gives  him  entrance. 


APPENDIX  C1 

A  considerable  weight  of  metaphysical  authority  tells 
us  that  in  ultimate  reality  evil  cannot  exist;  and  this 
is  taken  by  some  modern  theologians  to  indicate  the 
absurdity  of  believing  in  any  positive  evil.  The  greater 
number  of  metaphysicians  insist  on  the  unity  of  the 
Absolute;  and  this  is  held  by  such  modern  theologians 
to  prove  the  absurdity  of  belief  in  a  personal  devil. 
They  fail  to  note  that  exactly  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
logical  metaphysician  holds  evil  to  be  unreal  he  holds 
good  to  be  unreal  —  both  are  relative,  both  incidental, 
the  one  has  no  meaning  without  the  other.  Further, 
the  argument  which  proves  to  him  that  the  Absolute 
is  one  also  removes  human  personality  from  the  sphere 
of  the  Absolute.  Such  theology  as  that  above  referred 
to  imitates  Christian  Science  by  helping  itself  to  half 
the  metaphysical  conclusion  —  the  unreality  of  evil,  and 
ignoring  the  other  half —  the  unreality  of  good.  It  goes 
further  and  accepts  the  metaphysical  negation  of  the  evil 
One  while  ignoring  the  metaphysical  negation  of  the 
human  Many.     This  is  absurd. 

At  present  the  conclusions  of  metaphysic  and  religion 
do  not  seem  to  tally,  and  to  some  minds  this  is  accounted 
for  by  assuming  that  their  methods  are  different  although 
their  provinces  are  the  same.  This  is  a  possible  view, 
and  it  implies  that  if  both  metaphysic  and  religion  are 
to  be  justified  they  must  reach  the  same  conclusions; 

1  See  above,  p.  168. 
378 


APPENDIX   C  379 

but  that  we  are  forced  to  regard  man's  acquisition  of 
truth  by  each  method  as  in  process,  because  the  develop- 
ment of  mankind  and  of  all  that  pertains  to  life  appears 
to  us  to  be  in  process.  All  that  is  required  for  sane 
thought  is  to  recognise  that  each  method  of  seeking 
truth,  being  necessary  to  man's  life,  must  be  healthy 
and  legitimate,  and  that  while  we  may  therefore  expect 
great  gain  from  both,  we  cannot  now  know  either  in  its 
perfect  stage.  At  any  given  time  their  conclusions  may 
be  different. 

On  this  view  man,  by  the  method  of  metaphysic,  seeks 
truth  by  discarding  all  that  can  reasonably  be  doubted, 
and  building  upon  what  he  cannot  doubt  only  what  can 
be  proved  according  to  the  acknowledged  laws  of  thought. 
As  far  as  possible  man  addresses  himself  to  this  work 
using  reason  alone.  Reason  thus  employed  ever  hears 
the  voice  of  eternal  truth  bidding  it  — 

carve  out 
Free  space  for  every  human  doubt, 

and  to  beware,  above  all  things,  of  the  assumptions  of 
faith.  The  conclusions  of  metaphysic  are  only  justified 
by  the  absence  of  any  such  assumption  in  the  whole 
process,  while  in  religion,  on  the  other  hand,  man  begins 
with  the  assumptions  of  faith.  His  first  step  here  is 
experiment,  the  experiment  of  personal  dealing  with  the 
object  of  his  faith.  In  this  experiment  he  uses  his  whole 
nature.  He  makes  no  progress  but  by  persistent  experi- 
ment. His  conclusions  are  only  justified  or  condemned 
by  the  results  of  his  experiments.  Advancing  thus,  he 
is  lured  on  by  the  voice  of  eternal  truth,  crying  — 

I  need  thy  faith,  my  child, 
That  I  may  draw  thee  from  the  seeming  to  the  true, 
Long  hast  thou  been  beguiled. 

In  any  case  the  religious  man  must  look  upon  meta- 
physical   methods    of   substantiating    truths    arrived    at 


380  APPENDIX    C 

by  religion  in  another  way,  as  a  part  of  the  religious  life, 
just  as  any  other  aptitude  or  capacity  of  man  must  be 
included  in  the  religious  life,  and  just  as,  reciprocally,  the 
experiences  of  the  religious  life  must  be  accounted  for  in 
any  satisfactory  metaphysic.  But  he  must  be  honest; 
he  must  not  allow  his  religious  assurance  to  make  his 
metaphysic  vague  and  illogical.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
there  is  no  consensus  of  metaphysical  conclusion  which 
denies  the  underlying  postulates  of  the  Christian  religion 
—  that  God  is  a  person,  and  that  good  is  supreme  and 
must  triumph  —  although  it  may  be  doubtful  whether 
any  important  philosophy  gives  metaphysical  basis 
for  these  postulates.  Even  to  those  metaphysicians 
who  accept  the  conception  of  reality  which  extinguishes 
all  that  is  phenomenal,  that  conception  is  not  a  resting- 
place.  It  is  the  City  of  Unrest,  or  literally,  the  City 
of  Destruction,  from  which  the  pilgrim  sets  out  to  find 
anew  the  City  of  Reality.  On  the  lips  of  such  pilgrims 
the  eternal  question  takes  the  form,  May  not  person- 
ality within  that  city  dwell,  with  all  its  vivid  sense  of  time 
and  change  and  pain  and  joy  ?  In  other  words,  we 
believe  that  if  metaphysic  is  to  be  justified  at  all  the  physi- 
cal universe  is  not  outside  its  province;  it  must  take 
into  account  the  facts  of  personality,  the  love  and  hate 
which  are  the  most  vivid  things  we  know;  and  appear- 
ance cannot  be  mere  appearance.  That  which  appears 
to  be  devilish  must  be  related  to  reality,  because  that 
which  appears  to  be  godlike  must  be  so  related.  They 
may  not  bear  the  same  relation;  but  if  one  appearance 
has  in  any  sense  reality,  all  appearance  must  have  some 
reality.  It  follows  that  evil  is  not  to  be  described  as 
the  mere  negation  of  good. 


APPENDIX  D1 

The  popular  belief  that  all  men,  or  most  men,  after  death 
enter  upon  a  condition  beyond  the  reach  of  sin  and  sorrow 
is  probably  a  very  great  advance  upon  earlier  doctrines, 
which  attributed  the  cruelty  of  the  Eastern  despot,  who 
figures  so  largely  in  Jesus'  parables,  to  the  heart  of  the 
Father.  The  popular  idea  appears  to  rest  upon  two 
arguments  —  the  one,  starting  from  the  premiss  that  God 
is  love,  argues  that  he  will  not  inflict  prolonged  suffering 
upon  any  of  his  creatures;  and  the  other,  starting  from 
the  premiss  that  there  is  in  man  something  which  asserts 
its  entire  independence  of  sense,  argues  gratuitously  that 
death  will  release  all  men  from  that  connection  with  the 
sensible  which  is  now  theirs,  and  further,  that  because 
sin  and  suffering  are  imperfections  inherent  in  the  present 
connection  with  sense,  they  are  peculiar  to  that  connec- 
tion, and  we  must  pass  beyond  them  when  we  pass  be- 
yond sense. 

As  Christians  we  are  bound  to  grant  the  premiss  that 
God  is  love,  and  secondly  the  premiss  that  the  inner 
nature  of  man  asserts  its  independence  of  all  but  God, 
and  compels  the  belief  that  God  and  man  have  as  their 
essence  that  which  transcends  sense.  A  little  serious 
thought  will  show  that  neither  of  these  propositions 
justify  the  popular  belief  above  referred  to. 

If  suffering,  here  or  hereafter,  were  inflicted  by  God, 
we  should  certainly  have  reason  to  argue  from  the  teach- 

1  See  above,  pp.  355,359. 
381 


382  APPENDIX    D 

ing  of  Jesus  concerning  the  Father  that  he  would  not 
inflict  prolonged  suffering  upon  any  of  his  creatures. 
But  to  hold  Christianity  in  any  sense  we  must  believe 
that  God  permits,  for  some  good  end,  sins  that  he  does 
not  will;  and  if  we  assume  that  suffering  is  opposed  to 
his  will  as  is  sin,  no  argument  from  his  kindness  can 
prove  that  there  must  be  some  particular  term  to  sin  and 
suffering.  Regarding  suffering,  like  sin,  as  an  incidental 
consequence  of  men's  moral  freedom,  we  must  assume,  if 
suffering  is  to  end  for  all  men  at  death,  either  that  man 
then  has  his  will  by  some  miracle  suddenly  made  perfectly 
consonant  with  God's  will,  or  that  he  ceases  to  have 
freedom.  The  latter  alternative  involves  the  old  belief 
in  no  further  probation;  the  former  has  no  support  in 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  nor  in  the  processes  of  nature. 

The  second  proposition  the  Christian  is  bound  to 
grant  is  that  mind  must  transcend  matter,  and  God  and 
man  must  transcend  the  material  creation.  This  does 
not  give  us  any  reason  whatever  to  believe  that  the  en- 
tanglement of  spirit  with  matter,  the  unity  and  absolute 
interaction  of  mind  and  sense  which  is  our  only  expe- 
rience in  this  life,  will  for  us  cease  with  this  life.  Grant- 
ing that  a  purely  spiritual  existence  will  ultimately  be 
ours,  have  we,  from  any  analogy  of  nature,  or  any  in- 
spiration of  religious  genius,  or  from  what  we  call  reve- 
lation, any  ground  for  believing  that  the  present  is  the 
only  life  in  which  we  shall  be  an  integral  part  of  the 
physical  universe  ? 

The  analogy  from  what  we  know  of  progression  in 
nature  is  that  whatever  persists  develops  into  something 
higher  or  degenerates.  This  may  afford  a  presumption 
that  man,  having  obviously  risen  from  something  we  call 
lower,  will,  if  he  persists,  continue  to  develop  those 
powers  —  superior  memory,  reason,  etc.  —  which  differ- 
entiate him  from  the  lower  creation  and  unite  him  with 
that  aspect  of  God  which  those  powers  represent,  or  that 


APPENDIX  D  383 

by  their  atrophy  he  will  degenerate,  not  into  the  primitive 
type  from  which  he  came,  inanimate  or  animate,  but 
into  something  with  no  power  of  further  develop- 
ment. 

The  theory  of  many  successive  lives  of  the  one  per- 
sonality, all  equally  unconscious  of  the  others,  all  lived 
on  this  earth,  belongs  to  an  age  of  thought  when  the 
Now  was  as  much  the  centre  of  time  as  the  Here  was 
the  pivot  of  all  space.  This  theory  of  recurring  lives 
without  connecting  memory  cannot  prolong  itself  in 
generations  imbued  with  the  idea  of  the  ascent  of  man. 
Nor  can  we  suppose  that  man  returns  again  and  again 
to  this  little  world,  which  we  now  know  plays  an  in- 
finitesimal and  indifferent  part  in  the  vast  ages  of  the 
suns.  What  truth  underlies  this  idea  needs  restating 
to  have  validity,  although  as  it  stands  it  may  by  some 
occasional  fashion  be  galvanised  into  transient  activity, 
as  in  what  calls  itself  "theosophy."  While  we  have 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  man  may  not  lead  many 
successive  lives  in  the  material  universe  our  new  sense  of 
proportion  forbids  us  to  assume  that,  having  played  his 
part  on  this  little  stage,  he  must  return  to  it.  If  we 
have  made  any  progress  in  knowledge  of  the  visible 
universe,  such  progress  must  be  the  best  inspiration  in 
any  presumption  concerning  the  invisible  life,  about 
which,  let  us  repeat,  we  know  nothing.  By  analogy 
from  what  we  know  of  development,  therefore,  we  may 
argue  that  man  having  acquired  consciousness  and 
memory,  these  powers  must  belong  to  the  higher  reality 
towards  which  he  tends,  and  that  in  any  normal  future 
state  he  will  increase  rather  than  lose  them.  But  this 
analogy  leads  us  no  farther. 

The  undoubted  fact  that  when  the  change  of  death 
passes  upon  the  body  the  life  passes  from  it  in  a  medium 
to  us  invisible,  impalpable,  and  inaudible,  is  of  course  no 
evidence  that  the  life  is  not  endued  with  a  material  body. 


384  APPENDIX   D 

The  universe  is  full  of  matter  and  energy,  of  which  we 
have  no  sensuous  perception,  the  existence  of  which  we 
only  infer  from  certain  results  of  which  we  only  have 
knowledge  from  some  incidental  result.  If  we  consider 
all  the  time-worn  analogies  of  the  resurrection-life  we 
must  perceive  that  the  butterfly  is  as  material  as  the 
worm,  the  dawn  as  physical  as  the  night,  the  flowers  of 
spring  as  gross  as  the  black  earth  of  winter.  Tennyson's 
suggestion  in  "In  Memoriam"  of  the  immortal  soul  of 
his  friend  passing  from  star  to  star  in  the  universe,  finding 
congenial  work  in  each,  —  "so  many  worlds,  so  much  to 
do,"  —  has  quite  as  much  justification  as  any  other  view 
we  may  take  of  our  future  life,  of  which  we  know 
nothing. 

Man's  inner  mind,  when  contemplating  reality,  finds 
nothing  more  inexplicable  or,  in  a  way,  absurd,  than  all 
the  complex  visible  phenomena  of  his  life  on  this  earth; 
it  is  not  in  any  way  more  inexplicable  or  more  absurd 
that  his  spirit  should  go  on  leading  a  life  as  perfectly 
entangled  with  other  physical  phenomena,  of  which  he 
has  now  no  conception,  in  some  other  solar  system,  or 
should  continue  to  lead  successive  lives  of  increasing  or 
decreasing  power,  passing  through  every  solar  system  in 
the  universe. 

To  return  to  the  second  fallacious  conclusion  drawn 
from  the  premiss,  that  the  reality  in  man  must  transcend 
sense,  viz.,  that  sin  and  suffering  are  peculiar  to  our 
present  relation  to  sense,  we  must  perceive  that  the 
fact  that  man  will  ultimately  be  perfect  gives  no  hint 
as  to  how  many  stages  of  spiritual  imperfection  he  may 
pass  through  on  his  way,  even  if  as  a  separate  entity 
he  should  persist  to  the  end.  By  experience  we  learn 
that  the  higher  the  nature  the  more  deadly  its  evil. 
There  is  no  animal  that  can  inflict  so  much  injury  upon 
its  kind,  or  on  the  world,  as  man,  and  none  that  can 
suffer  so  much  under  injury.     The  more  intelligent  the 


APPENDIX  D  385 

man,  the  more  injury  he  can  inflict  and  the  more  he 
suffers.  Comparing  Satan  and  Adam  in  Milton's  epic, 
and  Mephistopheles  and  Faust  in  Goethe's  drama,  we  see 
that  the  poet's  insight  bears  this  out,  while  all  theology 
declares  that  the  pride  which  can  uplift  itself  in  stubborn 
inward  defiance  of  the  tender  influences  of  God,  is  a 
more  deadly  and  far-reaching  evil  than  any  sensuous  vice. 
It  is  quite  conceivable  that  moral  evil  in  its  worst  degree 
may  exist  in  a  non-physical  universe. 

We  must,  then,  admit  that  we  have  little  ground  for 
the  assumption  we  have  been  considering  as  to  the  ab- 
sence of  sin  and  sorrow  in  a  future  state. 


THE     END 


TOUCHING  THE  RELATIONS  OF  CHRIST 
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plexed workingmen  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  dead  wood  which 
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literature  of  no  mean  dimensions  equipped  with  all  the  grand  saving 
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and  Dr.  Emil  Reich  on  another  have  discussed  aspects  of  the  New 
Theology  —  the  former  seriously  and  the  latter  flippantly  —  and  a 
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